Vita Labyrinthae Similis
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: In Harry's 5th year, his friends and enemies find that there are other things to worry about than Voldemort: one student in particular discovers that even though his world has broken completely, he is not quite alone to pick up the bits. Edited, reposted.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling and various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, Raincoast Books and Warner Bros, Inc. No money is being made and no copyright infringement is intended. Moreover, I don't own any of the songs or plays or poems I used chapter-heading quotes from. I do own Nadezhda.

The story's title is taken from a real inscription on the base of a real sundial—the sundial itself is long gone, as is the maze that surrounded it, now no more than a crazed forest of unpruned boxwood reaching thirty feet into the sky, but the base remains, and the words cut into it are just legible if the curious reader will bend down and scrape away the moss that has filled them up over the years. It means, roughly translated, _Life is like a labyrinth; let us wander in the shade_.

This was originally written in my last year of college, begun in the autumn of 2001 and completed in January of 2002, and is set in Harry and company's sixth year. Thus the discrepancies between the events described in this story as having happened in Harry's fifth year and the actual events of _Order of the Phoenix_ may be laid at the door of sheer authorly ignorance, or at least lack of precognition.

CHAPTER 1

_...the past is never far..._

-Goo Goo Dolls

In clear air, the hawk flows like a bubble in a stream, liquid and light. Late afternoon sun catches the deep red of her wings, the dark, almost brownish red of dried, crusted blood. There is joy in her, there, in the sky. She seems part of the air, as if it has crystallized and taken form for sheer pleasure.

Nastasya landed, and transformed. Almost immediately that joy was gone from her, slipping away as she stood up and stretched, as if it had been a pool of happiness she had swum in, and it was sheeting off her naked body as water sheets away from a dolphin leaping upwards. She cracked the joints of her hands and shoulders, feeling the bones creak with the memory of flight, picked up her cloak from where she had left it crumpled beside Hagrid's hut, and began to walk back to the castle.

"Hello, Professor Serenskaya," said a familiar voice by her ear. She whirled.

"Malfoy," she said. "What are you doing out here? You should be in Potions." _Had he seen her transform?_

"Potions was cancelled," said Draco Malfoy silkily. "I thought I'd go for a walk."

"Where are your friends?" Nastasya asked, lighting a cigarette. Malfoy was invariably accompanied by his lackeys Crabbe and Goyle; it was odd to see him flanked merely by air. He was a slippery, rather unfairly beautiful Slytherin sixth-year, his blonde hair pale as snow and long enough to swing softly against his pointed chin as he moved. She had been fighting against an unreasonable dislike of him ever since she had come to teach at Hogwarts at the start of the school year, two months ago. It didn't help that she taught Defense against the Dark Arts, and was a Slytherin alumna herself, and as such saw a great deal of Draco Malfoy. There was really no reason for her to feel so worried; if he'd seen her transform, he'd know she was an Animagus, but so what? She was registered. McGonagall herself was an Animagus. Malfoy had always seemed rather interested in her, though, and not just as a student is interested in a new professor. Curiosity, and something else. Yes, she did see a great deal of Draco Malfoy.

Or did he see a great deal of her?

"They're sick," he said succinctly. She looked at him.

"I'm sorry to hear that." She blew out a silvery cloud of smoke. She was indeed sorry: if Crabbe and Goyle had not been ill, they would be with Malfoy now, and it was easier to deal with him when he wasn't alone.

"Thank you," he said. "How are you, Professor Serenskaya?"

"I'm fine," she said. The silence stretched. Malfoy regarded her, his pale grey eyes unreadable. This was ridiculous, she thought. She was a teacher, for Merlin's sake. Why did she feel skewered by that grey gaze like a bug on a pale silver pin? "Malfoy," she said suddenly, "was there something you wanted to say?"

Abruptly the pale mask broke, and she thought she could see a human behind his winter-colored eyes. He looked away. "I—" he began, and stopped. The mask was back in place. "No, I suppose not. I merely wanted to enjoy your company, Professor."

Nastasya let smoke trickle from her nostrils, like one of Hagrid's dragons. The silence grew again, became unpleasant, and suddenly eased. "I see," she said, and smiled. It was almost a genuine smile. They had paused by the bottom of the great stairs leading up to Hogwarts' entrance, and abruptly Malfoy sat down on a step, produced a battered pack of clove cigarettes, and lit one. Nastasya smiled despite herself. Malfoy noticed the smile.

"What?" he asked, exhaling. "You're going to reprimand me, aren't you."

"I suppose I should," she said, "but it would be rather rich, don't you think? Besides, I like those."

Wordlessly he offered her the pack. She took one, let him light it for her with a flick of his wand. The sweetness of the smoke brought memories back to her. Durmstrang, in the first flush of the high alpine spring, and a young man with eyes the color of new green apples...

She shook away the thought. She didn't like Malfoy, but she was learning that she could deal with him. And he was being uncharacteristically polite. Normally there was a thrusting, half-leering quality about him she didn't like. He seemed far more like the fifteen-year-old she knew him to be than the polished and unpleasant scion of the ancient Malfoy clan.

"Why was Potions cancelled?" she asked idly, drawing pictures with the tip of the cigarette and feeling rather young all of a sudden. Malfoy shrugged.

"There was a note on the door. 'Potions class is cancelled today. Four rolls of parchment on the use and abuse of the nightshade family in Fibrilia Potions due Wednesday.' I don't know. Snape works in mysterious ways."

"That he does." Nastasya didn't want to think about Severus Snape more than she could possibly help. It was hard to believe he was teaching at Hogwarts after having been a Death Eater; it was easy, very easy to believe that he had served Voldemort. Even without having seen the Dark Mark branded on his left forearm, she would have had no trouble believing that. It was just odd, believing—wanting to believe- she had been shut of him forever, to have come back to teach at Hogwarts and find _him_ the head of her old House. "Malfoy?"

"Yes, Professor?"

"What's it like having him as head of Slytherin?" She cursed herself for letting the sentence slip out. She had never meant to ask about Snape. Never meant to think about him. But sometimes there were things she couldn't avoid. _If Severus was an Animagus, he'd be a snake. No question about it. Not necessarily a poisonous one; but a snake nonetheless._

Malfoy looked down at the ground, dragging hard on his cigarette. The pale hair swung forward, hiding his face, so that she could only guess at the expression in those silver eyes. "It's interesting, I suppose you could say. He's fiercely loyal to the House, of course. And he's certainly got the right idea when it comes to dealing with those idiot Gryffindors." He looked up abruptly. "But you don't ask him questions about anything except Potions, and then only with some forethought. He's got a temper like my father."

_And that's saying something_, Nastasya thought fervently. She had known Lucius Malfoy briefly when he had been a student at Hogwarts, two years older than herself, and had been just clever enough to avoid him like the plague. He had been the ringleader of a gang of Slytherins whose name was legion and whose acts had been "overlooked" by the Board purely because one could not, _could not_, expel a Malfoy. The activities of Malfoy and his cronies had horrified her beyond normal schoolgirl hatred, and she had done her best to block the bastard from her mind. She remembered enough, however, to know that he was far, far nastier than Snape could ever be. She felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for Draco Malfoy, growing up in a household so devoid of love, or even humanity. His mother was little more than an ice queen, and the pride of the Malfoys must have made his young life rather complicated.

"Is he...fair?"

"Fair?" repeated Malfoy with a little laugh. "Are you asking me as a Slytherin or as a student?"

"I see." She crushed out her cigarette. "I think he must have a lot to hide. More, perhaps, than I do."

Malfoy rose. "Professor Serenskaya?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you, for...talking to me." The mask was wavering again, but as she watched he snapped it back into place. "I should be getting back to class."

"You're welcome," she said, and was surprised to find she meant it. "I've played truant long enough myself."

Together they went into Hogwarts, and above the castle the bright sky was clear and pellucid as champagne, and no birds rose in it.

Nastasya licked her lips, hurrying up the great staircase toward her office. The sweetness of Malfoy's cigarette still lingered on them.

_That was weird,_ she thought. _I wonder what he wanted. Malfoy always wants _something._ And I'm pretty sure he saw me transform. No one except Dumbledore and Lupin knows about that. _

_ So what?_ she asked herself acidly. _You're registered, aren't you? You've got nothing to hide. Not about that, anyway._

_ Would he tell Snape?_ She cut the thought off, but too late to stop it sinking heavily into her mind. It was none of Snape's business that the DaDA teacher was an Animagus. Besides, she was indeed registered, and there was no reason at all why she should worry about detection, or about the curtailment of her freedom that detection would cause.

She almost convinced herself. Almost.

She unlocked the door of her office, both physical locks and wards she'd set on it herself, and relaxed almost at once as the familiar scent of valerian and ambergris embraced her. She took off her cloak and hung it on the back of the scarred door before collapsing wearily in the chair, surrounded by her familiar tools and talismans. The Foe-Glass, a gift from her Headmaster at Durmstrang, gleamed softly on the wall beside the enchanted sword she'd picked up in Wales. Almost every flat surface of the room was cluttered with scrying equipment, early-warning devices, repeller-charms and magical weaponry.

Nastasya slowly became aware of a faint high-pitched whine. After a few moments of glancing around the room, she realized what the noise was, and pulled out her Sneakoscope from the desk's bottom drawer. It was screaming.

That was nothing new; like any school, Hogwarts had its share of students trying their damnedest to get away with things they shouldn't, and more than once Nastasya had been alerted to some minor fraud by the shrill cries of the little spinning top. It seemed remarkably loud this time, though, and she wondered what student prank would make it so concerned.

She put the Sneakoscope back in its drawer and covered it in a velvet scarf to muffle the noise, and reached for her crystal bowl.

Excitement was threatening to make her smile, despite her worry. Auror training had been exciting like this, up until the point where she'd almost died. She opened a leather case and drew out a selection of bottles and jars, poured and mixed until she had a glittering jewel-clear red liquid half-filling the crystal bowl, letting off glints of crimson light. She sprinkled a pinch of phoenix ash over the moving surface of the liquid, and leaned back as a puff of red smoke rose from the bowl. After the smoke had cleared, she tapped it with her wand. "Revelatio maledictus," she said briskly.

The liquid in the bowl turned opaque black.

"Shit," said Nastasya Kallikrevna Serenskaya, very quietly.

..._blood. Her hair is like blood, slow-flowing venous blood. Her face is the face of an angel unjustly dealt with. She moves like a dancer, like a snake._

_ I am falling, and the ground beneath me is so far away that I can hardly make it out._

_ "Nadezhda! Why are you leaving?"_

_ She does not answer. I shiver, and dissolve._

_ And I am not alone. I am no longer alone as I fall, and a voice breaks my head into pieces with pain._

Her evening class—the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw sixth-years—passed without incident. She was teaching them the methods of breaking glamories cast by Dark wizards, which were entirely different from those cast by the benevolent. Glamories weren't dangerous in themselves, but the ones used by the Dark were extremely difficult to break, and were often used to conceal the activity of Dark wizards in everyday life. It was rather funny, Nastasya often thought, that she was teaching Harry Potter Defense against the Dark Arts, when he had more field experience than she did herself. The last go-round with Voldemort had been the worst, and even Dumbledore thought they probably had another few years before the Dark Lord came back for another try, but she felt a strange urgency to teach Potter all she knew. She felt that he would need it.

Her attention wasn't really on the lesson, though, and she was as relieved as her students when the bell rang, freeing them. She had to talk to Dumbledore about the Revelation Charm. She had never seen it do that before. On her way out of the classroom, however, someone called her name.

"Yes?" she asked, turning to face—who else—the Boy who Lived. _Stupid title_, she thought absently. _He ought to be called something heroic, like The Dark's Downfall, or Voldemort's Worst Nightmare._

Potter gave her a lopsided smile. "I, um, have a question. Not about this," he waved at the DaDA classroom. "Do you know why Potions was cancelled today? I've been asking everyone."

Nastasya shrugged. "Not a clue, Harry. Draco Malfoy told me there was a note on the door giving you the homework assignment, but I have no idea why you didn't have class."

He scowled fiercely at the mention of Malfoy. "I see. I was just wondering, because I don't think Snape's ever cancelled class since I've been here. Not once. He's not dead, is he?"

She laughed, despite herself, and was surprised at how good it felt. "Not as far as I know. I'm sure the Headmaster will tell us if anything out of the ordinary is going on." _I wonder if Dumbledore knows about this. Whatever it is. Malfoy's acting human, Snape's nowhere to be seen—giving up an opportunity to be nasty to Harry, which isn't like him—my Sneakoscope's going mad, and the Revelation Charm I performed showed me utter blackness. Something is up. I wish I knew what._

"You're probably right," said Potter, and sighed. "I've got to go, I've got Quidditch practice before dinner. See you, Professor."

"Take care," she said. _I've never even heard of a Revelation Charm failing. Not if you do it right. And I know I did._

Back in her office, Nastasya had a good look at the Foe-Glass, just in case she'd missed something incredibly obvious. It was blank, showing only the drifting shapes of people moving through the corridor outside; nothing particularly ominous. But the object itself, oval and elegant in its pewter frame, cast her mind back to the spring thaw at Durmstrang, and the boy with the apple-green eyes, and she was as unable to stop the memories cascading out of the past as she had been to see anything at all in the oil-black Revelation.

It had been her last year at Durmstrang; she had transferred from Hogwarts at the end of her fourth year, leaving behind

(_Severus_)

everything that had happened there, and tried her damnedest to start again, start fresh, in the simple cold purity of the mountains. She had done well at Durmstrang, far better than at Hogwarts, and was preparing to graduate with honors. The then Headmaster, Florescu, had told her she had what it would take to become an Auror, and she had never felt before or since the incredible rush of joy that had come over her at that news. She had wanted to be an Auror ever since she understood what they were, at the age of twelve. To hear that she could achieve that had been to have her dreams come true.

She sighed, a half-smile tugging at her lips. Pity it hadn't panned out. But back then, when she had been seventeen and still somewhat innocent, the prospect of Auror training had put her on cloud nine. She had left Florescu's office with an idiotic grin on her face, and run all the way back through the castle to the great balcony overlooking the Alech glacier to tell her friends. They always gathered there in the spring; the warm breeze lifted itself from the valley and caressed the mountaintops there, and sometimes it carried the faint wild scent of the flowers on the distant alpine meadows with it. Lucire de Merisi and Ilinka Berkova had been waiting there for her, and squealed with delight when she told them her news.

"What about Radu?" Lucire asked, once the congratulatory storm had died down a bit.

"What about him?"

"Well, didn't you say he wanted to marry you?"

Nastasya hunched into her furs. "Yes. I don't see why this would stop him, though."

"Yeah, wasn't his mother an Auror?" Ilinka grinned at her, vast blue eyes guileless and happy. Nastasya nodded.

"One of the best. Come on, let's go get a drink."

But Lucire had been right. Lucire was always right; it was an annoying habit of hers. Lucire had loved Radu against her will ever since she'd known him, and had stepped aside when Nastasya had begun to show an interest, but she still retained her ability to predict his actions. Nastasya often thought that Lucire knew Radu better than Radu himself, and in this case she had known what he would do. She had told Radu her news that night at dinner, and had been shocked at how cold his brilliant green eyes had gone.

"So that's it," he said. "You're off to Auror training once we graduate."

She looked at him, puzzled and hurt. "Well, yes, I've got to go through the training. But that doesn't mean we can't..."

He cut her off. "I love you," he said, almost bitterly.

"I love you too, Radu. What's the matter?"

He hadn't said anything, and the conversation around them had taken over. She hadn't found out until much later that his mother had left his father to be an Auror, that her career had destroyed the marriage and eventually killed her, painfully. She hadn't known; she also didn't know if it would have changed her intentions. She loved Radu. She'd loved him for three years; she intended to marry him once they graduated. But she had thought she was born to be an Auror, and no life would have seemed complete without becoming one.

_Oh, Radu, _she thought, now, in her Hogwarts office. _What a pity we were both too damn young to deal with it. What a pity we didn't know the future._

The scar all the way down her right arm ached dully, as if in response to the memory. To the regret. She ignored it, with a perceptible effort of will, and returned her mind to the present and the interesting and disturbing events of the day.

The clock in the corner chimed loudly, jerking her out of her thoughts, and she realized it was time for dinner. Brushing phoenix-ash residue from her black robes, she rose and hurried down to the Great Hall, where almost all the other teachers had already taken their places at the staff table. Remus Lupin was there, looking extremely ill, and she remembered with a start that the full moon had been the previous evening. Time was passing faster than she had realized. McGonagall and Flitwick had already begun to eat; Dumbledore was having a deep conversation with Sinistra and Sprout, and the rest of the faculty was engaged in small talk, but she saw no evidence of Snape whatsoever. She closed the door behind her, fighting a blush as every eye in the Hall turned to stare at her, and slid into her place at the table between Lupin and McGonagall.

"You look preoccupied," said Lupin, passing her the pumpkin juice. "Anything wrong?"

As always, she was amazed at his perception, and his ability to totally disregard his own condition in concern for others. "I don't know," she said truthfully. "It's been an odd day. What about you, Remus? You look worn out."

"I had a tough night," he said ruefully. "Today wasn't much better. Is it just me, or are those Weasley twins getting worse with every passing month?"

"You'd think the prospect of NEWTs would shock them into behaving," agreed McGonagall. "They've got a great deal of potential, but they seem to be convinced that their horrible joke shop is more important than their studies."

Nastasya laughed a little. "The world needs jokers," she said mildly.

"My classes don't," Lupin retorted, and now she laughed for real. Lupin had been teaching upper-level electives, Magical Lit and History of Animagi, since Dumbledore had rehired him the year before. He'd taken the DaDA lessons again, but reluctantly, and had been more than happy to give them up when her name had come up for consideration as the Defense against the Dark Arts professor. Nastasya was terribly glad he'd let Dumbledore convince him to return to the Hogwarts faculty after the previous year's apocalyptic punch-up with Voldemort which had finally cleared Black's and Lupin's names. She'd always liked Remus; they'd been friends back in her own days at Hogwarts, even though he had the advantage of a year on her; and despite their different House affiliations, he had always been wry and funny and kind to her.

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "Surely it makes life more interesting."

"There's an old Chinese curse," said Lupin hollowly. "I expect you're familiar with it."

McGonagall sighed. "Relax," she said."I'll have a little talk with the Weasleys. Now _eat_, Remus. You look awful."

"Thank you so much," he said wryly, but did as she commanded. Nastasya found herself looking up and down the table, as if Snape would suddenly appear in the middle of dinner and explain his absence. She knew it was stupid to worry...no, worry was the wrong word... wonder so much about his vanishing for the space of a day, but it was just so unlike Snape to cancel a class with no warning that she was sure something was not as it should be.

"Nastasya?" McGonagall was looking at her questioningly. She sighed.

"Nothing. I'm just sort of vaguely wondering where Severus is. He cancelled Potions today, and I've just remembered he wasn't at breakfast or lunch."

McGonagall looked thoughtful. "He's probably just busy. I know _I_ 've got a stack of midterm exams in my office that badly need grading."

Nastasya raised an eyebrow. McGonagall was generally very much on top of her work. It had been a strange month, though. "I expect so." She didn't mention the Revelation Charm. Perhaps she should talk to Flitwick before approaching the Headmaster, in case she _had_ done something wrong.

_You didn't. You know you didn't._

She sighed, helped herself to more roast chicken. Maybe if she didn't think about it, it would go away. She turned her attention out to the Hall, her gaze flicking over the tables, coming to rest on Draco Malfoy's silver-blonde head. Crabbe and Goyle were still absent, but the rest of Malfoy's fan club was being as sycophantic as ever. She noticed Pansy Parkinson staring up with adoring eyes into Malfoy's face, and was surprised to see that the look of slightly bored superiority was conspicuously absent from his aristocratic features. Pansy tipped her head on one side and put the back of her hand against Malfoy's forehead as if testing for fever, and he batted her hand away, annoyed. He did look rather pale, she reflected. So did several of the other Slytherins. In fact, much of the student population looked slightly off-color.

_Probably the flu_, she thought. Malfoy might have got it from Crabbe or Goyle, and it might explain why he was acting oddly. Perhaps Snape was ill, too.

_He's _never_ ill,_ said the annoyingly persistent voice in the back of her head. _He's too unpleasant to be ill. Pathogens are frightened of him._ It was true; in all the years she'd known Severus Snape, he'd never been really sick. She remembered hating him for it in the throes of a particularly virulent cold in her second year at Hogwarts. _Bastard._

She refilled her goblet, waiting for the remains of dinner to vanish and be replaced by a plethora of desserts. Hogwarts's house-elves did a mean chocolate mousse.

She thought she might swing by the hospital wing after dinner. Just to say hello to Poppy, of course. She hadn't seen the nurse in a while.

_You always were a dreadful liar, Nadezhda_, said a silky voice in her head, and she cursed silently. She'd almost managed to forget that name, and what it had once meant.

"Nastasya?" Remus Lupin's voice broke into her thoughts. She welcomed the interruption.

"Mmmm?" She turned to face him. He lifted an eyebrow at her.

"Are you really all right? You looked a million miles away."

_Not miles. Years._ "I'm fine. Just tired. My Sneakoscope kept me up last night; the bloody thing wouldn't shut up."

McGonagall frowned. "Why was it acting up?"

"I don't know," she said, honestly. "Probably just some students plotting something. I don't even know why I brought it here. There's too much background intrigue."

McGonagall appeared satisfied with this, and just then the desserts appeared, effectively closing the subject.

Snape still hadn't appeared by the end of dinner, and while Nastasya rather wanted to approach the Headmaster and get her worries off her chest, she thought it might be wise to have a quick look in the hospital wing and then try the Revelation again, just to make sure. She rose to go, and noticed Lupin rubbing at his temples. "Remus?"

"Hmm?" He looked up.

"I'm going to go and say hello to Poppy. Why don't you come with me and see if she can give you anything for that headache?"

Lupin grinned suddenly, and it struck her again how young he really was, despite the silvering hair. "You always were too damn perceptive, Nastasya. All right."

They walked up to the hospital wing in companionable silence. Nastasya was less than surprised to see that at least half of the beds were occupied by students. She had been right; there was something going around. Madame Pomfrey was sitting at her desk, scribbling reports. She looked up as they reached her office doorway.

"Hello," she said, smiling. "Nastasya and Remus. I haven't seen either of you two in a while."

"That's because we're both so disgustingly healthy," said Nastasya, grinning. Lupin sighed wryly.

"Nevertheless, have you got anything for a migraine?" he asked. Madame Pomfrey hissed in sympathy, turned to her shelves of potions and nostrums.

"So what's this new plague that's attacking the school?" inquired Nastasya casually, lounging against the doorframe. Madame Pomfrey found what she was looking for, measured three drops of it into a glass of water (which went suddenly purple and started to steam) and gave it to Lupin.

"Drink that...all of it...and go to bed." She turned to Nastasya. "It's flu, or something like it. Half the school's already got it, and the rest of them are probably incubating. It should only last a few days, though."

"You haven't had Snape in here, have you?" Nastasya asked.

"Severus? No, why?"

"He's missing. I figured he was either ill or had eloped with Moaning Myrtle." Lupin choked on the potion, and Madame Pomfrey had to smack him roundly on the back; when she turned back to Nastasya, she too was suppressing a grin.

"I wouldn't know, dear. If I see him, shall I tell him you're concerned?"

"Would you? I worry so." She kept her face straight, barely. In the back of her head the horrible little voice laughed at her. _How right you are._

"I suggest a large bar of chocolate and a cup of very hot tea," said Madame Pomfrey seriously. "Best thing for worry-induced insomnia. Now go away, the two of you, and let me do my job."

They left, snickering. Lupin yawned as they got back to the faculty quarters. "I think I _will_ go to bed," he said. "Moaning Myrtle...ugh, what an image that is."

"Sorry," she said unrepentantly. "Couldn't help myself. Good night, Remus." _You will never know how much that cost me, my friend. Not if I can help it._

"Good night, Nastasya."

She shrugged out of her robes, thinking longingly of the night wind lifting her feathers as she flung herself across the sky, yearning for the utter freedom of hawkflight, and set up the ingredients for the Revelation Charm once more. This time she was making no mistakes. _You didn't make a mistake last time, either_, said the voice. _Yes, well, this time we're measuring with exaggerated care._

She proceeded to mix the ingredients together, stirring in textbook fashion, using the correct hands to add each new substance. Finally, the pinch of phoenix ash (_thank heavens Dumbledore's got_ _a phoenix, this stuff is fiendishly expensive_) drifted down to the surface of the brew in a perfect circle, and sent up its miniature cloud of red smoke. "Revelatio maledictus," she said, tapping the rim of the bowl firmly with her wand.

Dead black again. She had definitely done it right.

She peered closer into the lightless depths of the bowl. Not completely lightless, though, she suddenly realized. "Nox," she said, flicking her wand at the lights, and in the sudden darkness she could clearly see the dim red glow emanating from the liquid. It was moving sluggishly, round in a circle, as if stirred by some unseen hand.

Suddenly it was just too much. "Lux," she muttered, and the lights sprang back into life, and she scattered a handful of white crystals into the bowl, and the liquid turned clear and yellowish, inert. She was definitely talking to Dumbledore. Definitely.

The clock in the corner struck eleven. Perhaps, she amended, not tonight.


	2. 2

CHAPTER 2

_I remember searching for the perfect words_

_ I was hoping you would change your mind_

-System of a Down-

_The pain is getting worse, in great sweeping heaves. I am losing the light again. _

_ -Nadezhda. Where did you go-_

_ Who are you? Why won't you let go of me? Why are you asking me these things?_

_ -Nadezhda, you are in this man's head. That does not please me.—_

_ Who are you talking to? I am losing the light. The light. Oh Merlin, the pain..._

Harry was the last one in the Gryffindor common room that night; he sat staring into the dying fire, thoughtfully mulling over the events of the last few days. Malfoy was behaving strangely. Normally not a day went by without some sort of run-in with Malfoy and his goons, but he'd been remarkably reclusive for several days straight. He must be sick or something, thought Harry. Crabbe and Goyle had been absent for a while, too. Perhaps Malfoy wasn't so sure of himself without his lackeys around.

But he couldn't shake the feeling that something odd was going on. _Snape_ had cancelled class, for crying out loud. That was tantamount to the sky falling.

_He is human_, he reminded himself. _More or less._ _I'm sure there's some rational explanation for it._

_ I hope it's not Voldemort. Oh, God, I hope not. Not again._

_ But it's so nice not to have to deal with Snape I'm not going to question it too hard._

He sighed, cancelled the fire with a wave of his wand, and went up the spiral staircase to the dormitory above. As he slid away into sleep, he found himself wondering about Snape, as he sometimes did. What _was_ Snape's problem? Malfoy he could explain away by dismissing him as an inbred bigoted scumbag, but Snape didn't harp on familial pride. Nor did he believe Snape's hatred of him was entirely the fault of his father's schoolboy pranks. There was something deeper there.

Harry wasn't sure he wanted to know exactly what that was.

Nastasya had the Slytherin and Hufflepuff sixth-years first thing in the morning. Despite the fact that she'd fallen asleep almost immediately after climbing into bed—the concentration required for the Revelation Charm took a lot out of you—she didn't feel rested. She knew she had purple shadows under her eyes, and her hair refused to stay in its bun for some reason, wispy tendrils escaping even from the Hold-Fast Hex she'd put on it. None of the students looked much better, though. She saw a lot of pale faces, and there was a general undercurrent of coughing in the room.

"I won't say good morning," she told them, sitting down at the desk, "because so far it hasn't been. Let's just get right into it. We'll be doing theory for the next few classes, so you can put your wands away and take out parchment and quills. Am I interrupting you, Miss Parkinson?"

Pansy jumped and stopped whispering to her friends. "Uh, no, sorry, Professor." Nastasya waited a few moments—this was normally where Malfoy drawled something to Pansy which would make her snicker, but no such comment was forthcoming—before continuing. Malfoy coughed.

"As I was saying, this is going to be theory. Today we'll address the structure of some of the damaging curses; not the Unforgivables, that's next week, but more minor curses like Asphyxiate and Emesius. Open your texts to page three-forty-two, please." A Hufflepuff girl raised her hand tentatively.

"Yes, Lina?"

"Are you really going to teach us about the Unforgivable Curses?"

"Yes," said Nastasya bleakly. "Professor Moody—the false Moody-demonstrated Imperius and Crucio, didn't he? Demonstration and experimentation are one thing, and very important, but it's also important to understand why these curses are so powerful. I'll be teaching you about the structure of the curses themselves and the way the activating words and the stored magic of them interact with the focus of the wand."

Pansy yawned loudly. Nastasya debated screaming at her, but decided against it. She was no Snape, after all, and if Pansy Parkinson found her lessons boring, that was just too bad for Pansy Parkinson. She began the lecture, most of her mind on the subject at hand, but some of it still dwelling on the black and red swirl of the Revelation Charm of the previous night.

The period was almost half over when Draco Malfoy raised his hand. He had been coughing throughout the lesson, but so had more than half the class. "Yes?"

"I...don't feel very well," he muttered. "Can I go to the hospital wing?"

Nastasya raised an eyebrow. Malfoy's habit of malingering was legendary at Hogwarts. He did look ill, though; his face and throat were very pale and sheened with sweat, and the circles under his eyes rivaled her own. "All right," she said. "Get the rest of the notes from someone."

"Thank you, Professor," he said, coughing, and now she was staring in earnest. Malfoy _never_ thanked anyone other than Snape. Not in public.

_He thanked you yesterday for talking to him_, she reminded herself, but in another moment she was distracted. Malfoy had risen unsteadily, books clasped to his chest, and made it most of the way to the door before swaying and crumpling to the floor in a dead faint.

Pansy Parkinson squealed. The rest of the class turned to stare, all talking at once. "Be quiet," Nastasya snapped, hurrying to kneel beside Malfoy, turning him over. He was burning up, shivering violently despite the sick heat of his skin. She put two fingers to the pulse in his throat, found it was beating high and thready. "I'm taking him to the hospital wing. You're all dismissed. Study the rest of the chapter and take notes on your reading." She conjured a stretcher with a wave of her wand and levitated Malfoy onto it, as gently as she could. He did not stir.

"Can't I come?" Pansy demanded, hurrying to keep up as Nastasya floated the stretcher towards the door.

"No, you cannot, Miss Parkinson. I am quite capable of dealing with this situation without your help. Kindly return to your common room and do as I have asked."

She was aware of Pansy's glare boring into her back as she hurried Malfoy towards the hospital wing.

"He collapsed in the middle of class," she told Madame Pomfrey tiredly. "Actually, he'd just asked if he could go to the hospital wing when it happened. What is it?"

"What everyone else has," said the nurse, settling Malfoy in bed and propping pillows up behind him. "He'll do, Nastasya. Although he should have come to me before. Boys are all the same, you know. Stubborn."

"This one's remarkably so," she said. "I've got to talk to the Headmaster. Will you excuse me?"

"Of course," said Pomfrey, busy. "You don't look well yourself, Nastasya."

"I'm just tired."

"Enter," said Dumbledore, before she'd even had a chance to knock. She knew the password was required to open the passage to his office, but she hadn't known that it alerted him to the presence of visitors. She did as he asked.

"Ah, Nastasya," he said, twinkling at her as she came in. "I'm so glad you came to see me. I've got a favor to ask of you."

"Headmaster, I'm afraid I have some disturbing news," she said, sitting down in the chair he indicated. "What's the favor?"

"What's the news?" he countered. She sighed, pressing the heels of her palms against her aching eyes, and told him her list of concerns: how Malfoy had been acting differently, how Snape was inexplicably nowhere to be found, how the Sneakoscope had been acting up, and finally how both her Revelations had shown nothing but swirling reddish darkness. He listened seriously, his magnificent head tipped to one side, considering. When she had finished, he handed her a mug of tea and regarded his clasped hands for a long moment.

"The Revelation Charm is a very powerful spell," he said mildly. "You must have been very worried, to choose that particular incantation."

"Very confused, at least," she said. "Headmaster, do you know what's going on?"

"Not exactly," he told her. She sighed. There was no point hiding anything from Dumbledore. He made her head feel as transparent as the crystal bowl she had used.

"Where's Snape?" she asked him, bluntly. "It isn't like him to miss classes. He wasn't at breakfast, lunch or dinner yesterday, and I didn't see him this morning either. Is he ill?"

"Not exactly," repeated Dumbledore. "He is...indisposed, shall we say? The favor I have to ask of you is that you take over the Potions lessons for a few days. In Severus's absence, you're the most skilled Potions expert we've got, as indicated by your mastery of the Revelation Charm. Your masters at Durmstrang spoke very highly of your Potions abilities."

"Yes, of course I'll do it, but...is he going to be all right?" _Listen to yourself_, she thought acidly. _You sound like one of Lockhart's idiot fan-girls._

"Severus will be just fine," said Dumbledore, but the twinkle was gone. "He has...something he needs to deal with."

Nastasya looked at him over the mug. "Is this anything to do with the flu epidemic?"

The Headmaster gave her a smile for her very own. "Not exactly," he said for the third time. "The epidemic isn't natural, either, but I can reassure you on one point: your Revelation results have confirmed my suspicions. I don't know exactly what's going on, but _it isn't Voldemort._"

She was surprised at just how relieved she was to hear that. "Why can't I see anything in the bowl?"

"That I don't know," said Dumbledore. "I'm hoping to find out."

She finished her tea. "It's not Voldemort, though."

"No. It's not."

As she rose to leave, she gave Dumbledore a last long, considering look. "I hope you know what you're doing," she said, aware of how rude it sounded only as the words passed her lips. He didn't take it wrong, though.

"So do I, my dear," he said, his eyes very far away. "So do I."

_What do you want? What do you want of me?_

_ -I think you know.—_

_ No. Who are you? Why are your eyes so green? They hurt._

_ -Nadezhda. Nadezhda.—_

_ I knew her once. A long time ago. Leave me alone. The birds are clawing out my mind._

_ -She is a hawk. She is not what I remember her as. You are in her head, and she in yours.—_

_ No! I hardly speak to her. We knew each other a very little, and she always hated me._

_ -No.—_

_ You are dead. Go back to the shades. I cannot bear this._

_ -No.—_

"Did you hear? Malfoy fainted in the middle of Defense against the Dark Arts!" Ron threw himself happily into the depths of an armchair, grinning. "I heard one of the Hufflepuff girls talking about it in the hall. He's really sick."

Hermione's face lit up briefly as she looked up from her Arithmancy homework. "Really?" She'd never quite forgiven Malfoy for what he'd done to her teeth in their fourth year, even though it had sort of been an accident, and his continued reference to her as Mudblood scum had not exactly endeared him to her. "Good." She blushed, quickly, and added, "I mean, it serves him right."

"It certainly does," said Harry. "Maybe we can have a few days' peace." He didn't say that Malfoy had been acting oddly for some time now, and that they had actually been left in peace for almost a week. Ron bounced up and down with poisonous glee.

"Come on, Harry, Hermione, this calls for a celebration. Let's go down to Hogsmeade and have some Butterbeer."

"Oh, Ron, not now. I've got three more rolls of parchment to write for Professor Vector, and Magical Lit in an hour."

"So? How often do we get a break from Malfoy?"

Harry stretched, yawning. "He's right, Hermione. Seize the moment."

She sighed, put down her quill, and he could see her consciously fighting against a grin. "All right," she said. "But I'm blaming you if I do badly on this assignment."

"Of course," said Ron expansively. "Come on, let's go." Harry retrieved his Invisibility Cloak from his locker, and they set off for the secret passage that led to the Honeydukes cellar. Ron wouldn't shut up, whispering happily in Harry's ear the whole way down through the school corridors. "When I think of all the shit he gave you about you fainting when the Dementors showed up," he hissed, "I could strangle him. Heh. He'd better not bring _that_ up again, Harry. He won't have a leg to stand on."

"Shhh," Harry muttered, but he did feel a small tingle of nasty satisfaction when he thought of Malfoy's spirited imitation of his faint on the train. He'd have some things to say to Malfoy if that was ever mentioned again in his hearing. He grinned, invisibly, as they climbed into the hollow statue and set off down the passage to Hogsmeade.

Nastasya paced irritably before the fire in her chambers. She had nothing to do for two hours or so...of course, there were always assignments to grade, lectures to prepare, devices to monitor, but nothing pressingly urgent...and she was trying to think of an excuse to go and find Snape and discover what he had to "deal with." The most simple and transparent was that she was curious; that was part of it, but there was a great deal more. Radu's apple-green eyes had been throbbing in the back of her skull for a while now, for no apparent reason, and with the instinct that would have made her an Auror she believed that whatever Snape was suffering from had some connection to those green eyes. What that connection could be was utterly beyond her, however.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the fireplace. It had been a long time since she had found herself staring into a mirror, wishing she could change what she saw; the bones of her face held too much strength for beauty, and her eyes were a curious shade of slate grey under their forbidding brows. Surrounded by pretty girls, Nastasya had had to be _interesting_, since prettiness was beyond her scope. Now, she was used to that face, and in some ways rather glad she wasn't beautiful; beauty didn't seem to do its possessors much good, in her experience. Nevertheless, her appearance made her frown. She was far too pale, the circles under her eyes still very evident, and her hair (_one of them said it was the color of autumn, and the other that it was the color of dried blood, and you know damn well which of those you preferred_) had almost entirely escaped the hex and the pins. She sighed and yanked the rest of the pins out. "Accio hairbrush," she muttered, waving her wand at the room in general, and her hairbrush zoomed out of where it had been hiding for the past two days and smacked into her palm. Running the brush through her tangles of dark-red hair calmed her, as it always had.

_Just because I happen to like accuracy,_ she told herself firmly, _rather than poetic sentiment, does not mean I prefer the one statement to the other._

_Oh, Nadezhda, you really are ap_palling_ at dissimulation_, said that mocking, hated, not-hated voice as clearly as if he had been standing beside her.

"Shut up," she told the past, and twisted up her _blood-colored_ hair again into a tight knot. "There. I look like McGonagall. Not trying to make any kind of impression on anyone at all. So shut up."

She grinned suddenly at herself, standing in front of the mirror and talking out loud. _Definitely cracking up.__ It's having to deal with Malfoy that does it. This is why they haven't kept a DaDA teacher much longer than a year. Except Quirrell, and he was evil anyway. And Moody wasn't even Moody._

She straightened her black teacher's robes and swept out of her quarters. She didn't need to have an excuse. He was her colleague and she was concerned. End of story.

Severus Snape, quite appropriately, lived and taught in a dungeon. Nastasya raised an eyebrow at the atmospheric gloom, and wondered as she often had why he'd never just given in and written gothic novels. He had the persona and the setting down perfectly.

She tapped at his door, after checking the presence of wards on it with a revealing spell. No answer. She paused, and tapped again, harder.

Narrowing her eyes, she bent and peered through the keyhole, which was rather large and probably corresponded to a gigantic black iron key with runes carved into it, knowing Snape. It took her a moment to realize what she was seeing, and when she did, she went cold all over. She drew out her wand again, pointed it at the door, and muttered "Alohomora"; a moment later she heard the muffled clunk of tumblers sliding home, and the door creaked open at her touch.

Snape lay crumpled on the cold flagstone floor, his black hair splashed over the stones and tangled over his face. He was grey-white, barely breathing. Nastasya fell on her knees beside him and reached with a shaking hand for the lifebeat in his throat; his skin was sheened with fever-sweat, but he was icy cold. There was no telling how long he'd lain here unconscious in this freezing room.

She felt all her training and all her senses come back to her, with the urgency of the situation. The panic that had threatened to choke her when she had first seen him was gone now, replaced by frozen slow-motion calm. She closed the door of the chamber, lit a fire in the cold hearth by waving her wand at it, and then pointed the wand-tip at the supine form of Snape. She lifted him with a spell—thin as he was, he was at least a foot taller than her, and heavy with the helpless weight of unconsciousness—and floated him through the connecting doorway to his bedchamber.

Nastasya lit that fire too with a gesture, and gently lowered Snape onto his narrow bed. He lived ascetically, she noticed, without really paying attention. The room was furnished as sparsely as a first-year dorm at Durmstrang, which was one step up from a prison. She covered Snape with quilts, aware that the fire would take a while to heat up the room to a normal human level.

She listened to his chest. The faint rattling and rasping as he breathed told her all she needed to know, and she gathered the ingredients she required from his own stock of potions. Part of her was back in Durmstrang, taking notes with a self-propelling quill while carefully brewing a test-batch of feverfew-and-valerian extract, listening with half an ear to the Potions mistress. _"You may find this branch of the science boring,"_ she had droned, _"but medicinal potions are by far the most important brews you will ever make. Pay very close attention. You may need to remember this someday."_

Snape had the mysterious illness that was spreading throughout the school. That much was obvious. What Nastasya didn't understand was Dumbledore's rather inscrutable and delphic implications that it wasn't just the illness. "Something he has to deal with." She wondered how long Snape had been ill; she rather thought that this was secondary, that the thing Dumbledore had alluded to had begun beforehand. Sometimes she really did wish that people would just come out and _tell_ one another things instead of dancing around with vague references to somethings and indispositions and other assignments to be completed.

The cauldron she had hastily set over a ball of mage-fire was coming to the boil. She added the extract of wormwood, stirred counter-clockwise three times, and murmured some words in an obscure branch of Gaelic, before cancelling the mage-fire with a wave of her wand and turning back to Snape.

He was beginning to stir, tossing his head from side to side on the pillows, breathing raggedly. She felt his hands; he was beginning to warm up, finally. _Moron_, she thought wryly. _Serves him right for living in a walk-in freezer._

His eyelids fluttered, parted. She was suddenly transfixed by that black gaze, as she had been by Malfoy's silver eyes the day before. _What is it about Slytherin men and their ability to do that with their eyes? It isn't fair._

"...Nadezhda," he murmured, and she realized that he was delirious. _Sod it. _"Nadezhda...losing the light..."

"Hush," she said, managing with Herculean effort to control her voice. "Hush, Severus. It's all right." His given name tasted strange in her mouth; she was so used to calling him _Snape._

"...green eyes," he muttered, and broke off in a fit of coughing. She frowned. Her eyes were grey. Unless...

_No. That's just ridiculous. You may be a closet romantic but you've better sense than that._

She sighed, slipped an arm around his quaking shoulders, helping him to sit up until the spasm eased. _I am NOT going to think about this. I am just going to do what must be done, and then I am going to leave and teach his sodding class, and then I am going down to Hogsmeade and getting very, very drunk._

The thought grounded her again. She let..._Severus_...lie back, and poured the cooling potion into a glass. The sweet scent of verbena and bergamot almost overpowered the bitter wormwood. She knew it tasted of lemon and smoke; she had drunk it herself enough to remember. "Severus," she murmured, licking her lips as if to fix the taste of that name in her mind. "Can you drink this?"

His eyes fluttered open again, fever-bright. She helped him sit up again, held the glass while he drank. Twice he was interrupted by fits of coughing, but at length she'd poured most of it down his throat, and she was happier with the sound of his breathing than she had been.

"Nadezhda...he's in my mind..." he murmured.

"Who's in your mind?" she asked him gently.

"Don't know," he coughed. "Green eyes. Knows your name...won't give it up..."

"It's all right," she said quietly, although she now knew it wasn't, not at all. "It's all right, Severus, you're safe. Sleep."

"...losing the light, Nadezhda...I'm falling..."

"I'll catch you," she heard herself say.

Harry Potter looked stunned as he walked into the Potions classroom, flanked by his friends Weasley and Granger. "Professor _Serenskaya_?" he asked, incredulous.

Nastasya could just about trust her voice by now. "Yes, it's me," she said, as evenly as possible. "Professor Snape isn't well enough to teach today. I've been enlisted to take over."

Weasley and Longbottom gave little cheers at this, but Pansy Parkinson, who was forced in Malfoy's absence to sit alone, scowled fiercely. The rest of the Slytherins didn't seem to mind; she rather thought they'd admired the way she dealt with Malfoy's collapse. She didn't honestly care.

"Where had Professor Snape left off?" she asked, and began the lesson, and was intensely proud of herself as she managed to remain calm and collected all the way through. Potter came up to her after the bell had rung.

"So he _is_ ill," he said conversationally.

_Give me patience to deal with this, Merlin. I honestly like this kid but I cannot, I CANNOT listen to him trash Snape right now._

"I'm afraid he's got a touch of the flu that's going around." Potter nodded, and she was surprised to see no exultation in the famous green eyes. She had considered those green eyes when Snape had first mentioned them, but he had said the green-eyed man knew Nastasya's name as Nadezhda, and only one man with eyes the color of witch-apples knew that name.

"Are you going to be taking the Potions lessons until he's back?"

"Yes. The Headmaster has asked me to act as his substitute. Was there something you wanted to ask, Potter?"

He looked at her, for a moment, then shook his head. She began to gather up her notes. "Go on, then, you'll miss dinner."

"Aren't you coming?"

"No," she said. "I've got something I need to do."

Two things she needed to do. Fly, and get smashed out of her mind. She almost ran out of the main entrance, and transformed before she finished descending the steps. With the simplification of the world into a hawk's world, some of the roiling mass of emotional upheaval that threatened to drown her receded, and she was free to simply enjoy the sweet night wind between the primary feathers of her outstretched wings. Hawkflight was like a drug to her, always had been, since she first mastered the Animagus transformation at age fifteen. She had dealt with some of the most difficult times in her life by spending some time on the wing. It cleared her head and allowed her to think past whatever the current crisis happened to be.

She flew for almost an hour before returning over the woods towards Hogsmeade, and landed in the courtyard of the Three Broomsticks to transform back. Her hair...her blood-colored hair, she thought wryly...had come loose again, and was flowing down her back almost to her knees. She didn't care. She walked into the empty pub and sat down at the bar.

Madam Rosmerta came over to her. "Miss Serenskaya," she said, warmly. "Nice to see you again. How are you?"

Nastasya gave her a wry look. "I've been better," she said. "You got any Laphroaig?"

Rosmerta raised an eyebrow. "My," she said. "We don't get much call for that here. I must say, you've got taste, though." She produced a rather dusty bottle of what Nastasya considered the best single-malt whiskey in the known universe, and poured her a drink.

"Who else around here drinks this?" Nastasya asked, knocking it back. A pity to waste the taste, but she needed the effects more. Rosmerta refilled the glass without batting an eyelid.

"Severus Snape."

Silence stretched for a long moment. "Holy Merlin's bones," said Nastasya, and began to laugh. The laughter was close to tears when it began, and it became tears completely of a sudden, and Nastasya was horribly glad the Three Broomsticks was empty except for her and Rosmerta. The proprietress came around the bar and put her arms around Nastasya, and let her cling and howl for a while.

Eventually she regained some control, sniffing. "Sorry," she said thickly.

Madam Rosmerta handed her a handkerchief. "No need. Are you going to tell me what's wrong, or am I going to have to buy you another drink?"

"Both, I think," Nastasya gasped. "This is typical. I try and drink to forget, and I'm not doing a very good job of it, am I?"

"Sweetie, have you got yourself in trouble?"

"No," she said, seriously. "Not yet." She looked into the amber depths of the glass, and took a deep breath, and began.

"I went to Hogwarts for four years," she told Rosmerta. "Snape was in his second year when I entered the school. I was sorted into Slytherin...with my parentage, there was little question about that...and I suppose I sort of saw him as the embodiment of Slytherin House. I mean, here you have this scared little foreign girl who's just begun an entirely new life, very impressionable, very vulnerable, exposed to the society of someone like Severus." She hardly realized she'd used his first name. "He was so...I don't know. Proud, and haughty, and too good at what he did, and charismatic in a nasty sort of way. Not like the Malfoys. He was never prejudiced like the Malfoys; he hated not because someone's blood was impure, but because they were incompetent, or stupid, or just not as good at something as he thought they ought to be. He had little mercy, and no patience." She paused, sipped her drink, and remembered her cigarettes. Rosmerta lit one for her with a flick of her wand. "Thanks. But I remember him as just being _Slytherin_, and young fool that I was, I thought that was magnificent, and I wanted to be just like him. Even then, though, I could see that there was something dark in him; I think, now, he did what he did because at the time the Dark seemed so much more competent and powerful than the Light, and he was too good a strategist to ally himself with the losing side. He must have realized his mistake quite soon afterward, but it wasn't so easy to back out of. In any case, I was infatuated."

She drew deeply on her cigarette, regarding the burning tip of it absently, seeing instead a classroom many years ago, and a pair of shadows merging into one. "I don't think either of us realized how deeply infatuated I was. He became my...friend, I suppose you would say, although friendship is not a concept he's familiar with. He would tease me mercilessly. My other friends kept telling me he was nothing more than an unpleasant slimeball with the manners of a dyspeptic adder—in those very words—but I thought, and I still think, that he was hurting me to make me stronger. It worked." The cigarette was down to the filter; she chained a second one. "I eventually admitted to him that I would happily die for him if the occasion arose. He sneered, which he's very good at doing, and proceeded to tell me that I was being ridiculous, and that he didn't care, and so on. I could tell that most of it was true; the he-didn't-care part I wasn't sure about. He's the reason I left Hogwarts." She swallowed the rest of her drink. Rosmerta refilled the glass, silently, her eyes never leaving Nastasya's face. "I transferred to Durmstrang. My parents were happy; they'd wanted me to go there in the first place. I was happy; I was far away from Severus and all the shit he, and I, had put me through. I met a boy called Radu Niakov, and fell in love with him. I convinced myself to fall in love with him, and it worked fairly well. He was going to marry me. Then, just before we graduated, I was told I had the opportunity to become an Auror."

She paused, crushed out the cigarette half-smoked. "I'd always wanted that, ever since I was a child. I think that might have been one of the things that made me so susceptible to Severus's charms, such as they were. He would have made an incredible Auror. He had everything it took: brains in abundance, ambition, drive, and an unswerving devotion to carrying out his duty, whether that duty was turning the Gryffindors' beds into giant slugs or saving the world from Voldemort." Rosmerta flinched at the name. "Sorry. Anyway, I was offered the chance to fulfill my dream, and I took it. But Radu couldn't bear Aurors; his mother had been one, and it had ruined his parents' marriage and eventually killed her, painfully. He didn't want me to train as one. I was seventeen going on eighteen, and no one could tell me not to do what I had always wanted to, and I told him I was going ahead. He broke off the engagement and disappeared back into Moldavia. I know...now, at least...that he was hurt far worse than I was by that, but at the time it seemed grossly unfair and appallingly painful." She sipped at the whiskey again. "Am I boring you?"

"No," said Rosmerta quietly. "Go on."

"I began the training. It was fantastic. I worked with Alastor Moody himself, and Frank Longbottom, before...well, I worked with them, and they both told me I was really rather good. I had been in training for almost a year when a Death Eater caught me alone and unprotected, and did this." She rolled up her right sleeve, showing Rosmerta the long, twisted, rippled scar that stretched from her wrist to her collarbone. "I was lucky; he would have taken off my hand, but I rolled in time, and he only managed to sever most of the tendons in this arm. I killed him."

Rosmerta swallowed. "Go on."

"They fixed my arm, but they couldn't fix my head. I was ill for months, raving about red eyes in the darkness and the green light that would take the sun's place in the sky. Eventually I got over it, but I knew...and so did they...that I would never be an Auror." Nastasya rolled down the sleeve again, hiding the ugly scar. "I joined the Ministry as a Potions and Charms RD researcher, and spent my spare time assisting in the early-stage training of young Auror candidates. I figured that if I couldn't do it I might as well help someone else to." Her voice dripped bitterness. "Life went on, and Harry Potter began to defeat Vol...sorry, You-Know-Who, on a regular basis, and eventually Dumbledore needed a Defense against the Dark Arts teacher. After Moody...or Crouch pretending to be Moody...Dumbledore still liked the idea of someone with Auror training taking the position. He looked around, and there I was twiddling my thumbs, and he offered me the job. But the point is, something very strange has been happening, Rosmerta. There's some sort of flu that's taken the castle by storm...don't worry, I did an antimicrobe charm on myself before leaving the grounds...and I tried to do a Revelation Charm to see what the hell was going on, and if it was evil or not, and I saw nothing. Just blackness. Swirling blackness."

Rosmerta frowned. "Blackness? I thought..."

"So did I," said Nastasya. "I have no explanation for it at all, and neither does the Headmaster."

"_Dumbledore_ doesn't know?"

"No," she said sadly. "Or if he does, he isn't telling. And, Rosmerta...Snape's ill. Very ill. I found him collapsed on his floor, unconscious. He was raving when he came to, about green eyes and falling. And he used my secret-name, the one I only tell my closest friends. Only two people know that name now that my parents are dead. Radu, and Snape. And Radu's got eyes so green they glow." She finished her whiskey again. "Snape said something in his delirium, something like...'he's in my head, and he knows your name,' and Merlin help me, I don't know how Radu could be in Snape's head, or even know who Snape is. I never spoke of him. Not once."

Rosmerta blinked, as if suddenly struck by a thought. "What did you say Radu's last name was?"

"Niakov. Or Niakoff. Depends where he's living."

Rosmerta pulled out a _Daily Prophet from_ a stack under the bar. The date was two days ago. She riffled through until she found what she was looking for, but realization hit Nastasya like a Bludger, and she knew what Rosmerta was going to show her even before she read the word _Obituaries_ at the top of the page.

_Radu Niakoff, Ministry attache to Moldavia, after a short illness. Mr. Niakoff is survived by his wife, Lucire de Merisi Niakova, and his sister Carmilla Niakova._

"Merlin's blood," said Nastasya very calmly. "Well, that just explains everything, doesn't it?"

Harry wasn't feeling particularly well at dinner, and it got worse quickly. Ron found him shivering in the bathroom that evening, and scowled fiercely at him. "You look horrible," he said. "Are you okay?"

He shrugged. "I think it's the flu, or something. I'll be fine."

"You should go to Madame Pomfrey, Harry." Ron folded his arms and stared at him as he leaned on the washbasin and coughed so hard he was almost sick. "You sound really bad."

"I'm fine," he repeated. "Just tired." He didn't want to succumb to what Malfoy had clearly come down with. It was a matter of pride.

Ron dragged him out of the bathroom and made him sit down in front of the fire. "Hermione? Come tell Harry he's got to go to the nurse."

Hermione looked up, frowned. She set aside the Transfiguration take-home exam she was working on and joined them by the fire. "What's wrong?"

Harry looked up at her. He felt pretty dreadful, but he wasn't going to admit that without a fight. "Nothing," he said. "Got a touch of the flu. Ron's being all motherly," he added, and had to duck as Ron took a swing at him. Hermione put her hand on his forehead.

"Harry, you're burning up." She looked at Ron, worry making her eyes huge. "Ron, help me get him to the hospital wing."

Ron grinned at him. "See? Majority rule. Come on, Harry." He pulled him to his feet, held on to him as he swayed briefly. He gave up the unequal fight, and let them drag him along the corridors to the hospital wing. It was still brightly lit and busy, despite the lateness of the hour, and Harry had never seen so many kids there at one time. It looked like more than half the school was sick. Hermione and Ron took him into Madame Pomfrey's office.

"Um," said Ron. "Harry's not feeling too well." The nurse looked up, gave Harry a wry smile.

"You too?" she asked. "You've held out longer than most. Come on, let's get you settled." She led Harry to one of the empty beds and pulled a curtain around it so he could undress. "How are you feeling really? Is it just the headache, or have you got the sore throat and the cough as well?"

"All of it," he admitted. The sheets did feel awfully good against his hot skin, and the dizziness was better when he was lying down. Hermione and Ron had followed them, and were regarding the nurse with a mixture of concern and relief.

"Is he going to be all right?" asked Hermione.

"Oh, yes," said Madame Pomfrey. "He'll be fine. You two run along now. You don't want to catch this too."

The last thing Harry remembered was drinking the potion Madame Pomfrey gave him; after that the world receded for a while, and he didn't dream.


	3. 3

CHAPTER 3

_I went down to rescue you_

_ I went all the way down_

_ I went down for the remains_

_ Sort through all your burns and stains_

-Hole-

Day dawned grey and blustery. Nastasya rolled out of bed two hours before it was necessary, and spent some little time being violently ill; she had known it would happen, but the little oblivion she'd bought with the whiskey had certainly been worth it. Feeling light and empty, she washed out her mouth and conjured up a cup of extremely hot coffee, and sat down in front of the fire to think what the hell she was going to do.

By the time she had to leave for the first period class, she had a few ideas. The headache had receded under the barrage of aspirin, and her stomach had more or less stopped doing acrobatics, but she had certainly felt better than she did as she watched the Gryffindors and Slytherins file into the classroom. There were noticeably fewer of them than there had been the day before—Harry Potter was absent, for one, and she was unsurprised to hear the chorus of coughs that echoed in the stone-walled room. "We're going to do something a little different today," she said. "How many of you know anything about possession?" A few hands were raised, Hermione Granger's among them. "Very good. What about ghost sickness?"

Fewer hands. Granger, of course, and a Slytherin she didn't know very well. "Eileen?"

Eileen Tsosie looked surprised at being called on. "Um," she said. "It's part of the Navajo Indian myth-magic history. The idea is that ghosts can really hurt the living, that you want to avoid anything to do with them as much as possible. When someone dies, you have to go through certain rituals to give closure and to ensure that the ghost of the dead person doesn't stick around and make you sick. You can't use their belongings or live in their hogan."

Heads turned to look at her. Nastasya nodded. "There are parallel concepts in the mythoses of almost every culture, including boring old anglo-saxon Britain. Today's assignment is to go to the library and find out as much as you can about possession and ghost sickness, as well as ghost-laying and the Ending Rituals. I'll expect a roll of parchment on the subject in my office by dinnertime. Off you go."

_That's cheating_, she thought. _I know that's cheating, using students to do your research for you. But they will learn, and they might find out something I can use. If not me, then Dumbledore._

_ Besides, I feel like hell and I don't want to lecture today._

_ And besides that, I've got to check on Severus..._

She raised an eyebrow at the chaos in the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey was clearly overwhelmed; nearly every bed in the ward was occupied, and some of the kids looked really ill. "Merlin's eyes, Poppy," she said, closing the door behind her. "It looks like the Sebastopol field hospital in here." She noticed Potter lying curled up in one of the beds at the far end, looking rather young in the depths of sleep.

"I'm no Florrie Nightingale," sighed the nurse, tucking wayward strands of hair behind her ears. "They just keep coming in, Nastasya, and I'm running out of even Pepperup Potion."

"Anything else you're low on?"

"The basic analgesics, antipyretics, antitussives. Mostly I need the Pepperup, and the worst cases need Vitaris Tincture."

"I'll see what I can do," she said briskly. "I don't think the Headmaster would mind if I use some of the school's ingredients."

"He'd thank you on bended knee," said Poppy, bending over yet another fevered brow. Nastasya let herself out. She hurried down to Snape's dungeon, aware that her priorities were somewhat skewed, but justifying it by thinking of all the vital ingredients Snape hoarded in his quarters. She unlocked his door with a spell again.

He lay as she had left him, in the narrow bed, his hair tumbled over his forehead and slipping down the pillows like black rain. His fever had gone down a bit, for which she was suitably thankful, and he wasn't as restive as he'd been, but she didn't like the rapid gasping quality of his breathing at all. _How long did you lie there on the freezing floor? _she wondered. _How long had you been feeling bad, without telling anyone?_

_Oh, possibly just about as long as Radu's been dead,_ she thought acidly. _I'm a moron. I should have seen this before. Should have known. I did papers on ghost-possession, for crying out loud. _

She sat down on the edge of Severus's bed, smoothed away the damp hair from his face. Pulling her wand out of her sleeve, she made a complicated series of gestures over her shoulder and muttered under her breath. A cauldron jumped across the room to land in the hearth over a suddenly blazing fire, and a selection of bottles and jars danced through the air to dispense their contents into the cauldron. She remained where she was, as if transfixed, staring down at the pale, closed face of the man who had been her tormentor for four years, and who had remained in her mind ever since. All the time she had known him, he had never, ever been helpless, never needed aid, especially not hers. _Is this a dream come true? _she wondered. _Or is this just the last possible straw for him? What is he going to do if he wakes and finds me here, and his mind is clear enough for him to understand?_

As if in answer, Snape's lashes shivered and parted, and his black eyes met her grey ones, and knew them.

"It _is_ you," he croaked. She made as if to rise, but a hot, thin hand closed over her wrist—the wrist the Death Eater had slashed—and held her firmly. "I thought I'd dreamed you."

"I'll go," she said quietly. "Just let me finish making your medicine, and I'll go."

"No you won't," he told her. His voice was a whispery ruin, but it still held shreds of the silk and steel that had made her listen to his every word, all those years ago. "You'll tell me who he is, and why he's in my head."

She regarded him evenly. "His name is Radu Niakov, and he would have been my husband."

Snape choked, began to cough so hard he couldn't breathe. She cursed under her breath and set the tip of her wand against his chest, whispered something. Abruptly the spasm ended, and he collapsed back against the pillows, gasping, hands pressing the spot where her wand had touched him. She got up, went over to the fireplace, returned with a glass of clear pale-gold liquid. "Don't talk," she told him, and was proud that her voice only shook a very little. "Drink this."

He did as he was told, which was surprising and rather gratifying, and looked up at her with hooded, unreadable eyes. "Your husband," he muttered, between his teeth.

"I said he _would_ have been. He's dead. And he's in your head because for some unknowable reason he's jealous of you." She turned away, folding her arms.

"Nadezhda," he said quietly, and she jumped as if stung. "What happened to your arm?"

She turned back, a strange desire to hurt him, to see hurt in those inscrutable black eyes, rising in her. "This?" She pulled away the sleeve, letting him see the ropy twisting scar. "Oh, this was where a Death Eater tried to kill me. Go to sleep, Snape. You need your rest."

He began to cough again, softly this time, helplessly. She tried to stop herself caring, but the sound wrenched at her guts, and she found herself returning to the bedside and taking him in her arms and holding him calmly as the fit shook him, lending him her strength, for he had none.

Tears pricked behind her eyes. As soon as the fit passed, she let him go and stood up again. "Madame Pomfrey needs some more potions. May I use your stock of ingredients?"

"Of course," he said hoarsely. "Nadezhda?"

"It's Nastasya," she said, looking at the floor.

"Nadezhda," he repeated, ignoring her, "I'm sorry."

Her head came up. He was lying limply in the bed, looking more vulnerable than she had ever seen him, and she didn't know what she wanted to do; _strangle him_ was one option, and _hold him tight and never let him go_ was another. "Sorry for what?"

"Your fiance's death."

She found that she could laugh. "Oh, no," she said. "No, Severus, he broke off the engagement years ago, when I chose to train as an Auror. He married my best friend." She turned on her heel, before she could see what expression _that_ brought to his face—she was not at all sure she could take that—and left.

Nastasya returned to her office that evening, red-faced and frizz-haired from bending over steaming cauldrons all day, and found the pile of parchment rolls from her sixth-years placed neatly in a box in front of the door. She smiled; in her student days, it would have been an amazing occurrence if she'd actually _done_ an assignment of this sort, let alone delivered it on time to the professor's office. Students had clearly improved since she was one of them. Moreover, the essays they'd written were more than a little helpful, and several of them gave her ideas.

She met with Dumbledore that evening, after dinner. The meal itself had been rather a sorry affair; at least half the teachers were out of commission, and the student body had shrunk considerably. She, Lupin, McGonagall and Dumbledore had the table mostly to themselves. At a warning look from the Headmaster, Nastasya had avoided telling the others anything more than they already knew, but as she and Dumbledore ascended the spiral staircase to his office, she filled him in on what she'd learned. "Radu never forgave me for my decision," she said, "which isn't exactly fair, since he was the one to leave me, and _I_ had to forgive _him_ for that. But he was never the sort to let something go, and I think that now he's dead he took the opportunity to find the one living person besides me who knows my true-name, my secret name, and inflict some misery on him for knowing that name."

"I see," said Dumbledore. They had reached his office; he opened the door with a word and ushered her in. Fawkes the phoenix swooped down from his perch in the corner and settled himself comfortably on her shoulder.

"Good evening, sir," she greeted him courteously. Fawkes nibbled at her ear. She found that, despite feeling extremely old and scarred and ill-used, she could smile.

"He has very good taste in ears," said Dumbledore mildly. "My dear, you've been crying."

"Is it that obvious? I'd rather hoped I'd fixed the damage. I've been taking care of Severus, Headmaster. He's very sick."

"I thought he might be," said Dumbledore, regarding the tabletop inscrutably. "I had hoped he wasn't. He approached me before this grew so bad, and said that he was being attacked mentally; this would be three days ago now. He said someone or something was trying to get into his mind. He required time and energy to deal with it on his own."

"He's as proud as Lucifer," she said bitterly. "He'd never ask for help. He'd die cheerfully before asking for help."

"I know," sighed Dumbledore. "It's not exactly a helpful trait in these circumstances. How is he?"

"He'll do. I found him yesterday afternoon, after our discussion, collapsed on the floor of his quarters. He was clearly feverish, and I've no idea how long he'd been lying there in that frigid dungeon of his before I found him. He'll recover, but I think he might be in for pneumonia before he does."

Dumbledore massaged the bridge of his nose. "Oh, Severus," he murmured. "What a pity you're so brave."

"Stupid, more like," Nastasya said levelly, and was astonished at the flash of blue ice from the Headmaster's eyes.

"Nastasya, I know that you and Severus have your differences. He is not an easy man to like, and you are right about his pride. But I will _not_ have you call him stupid, or insult him in any way. Do you understand me?"

"You're right," she said tonelessly, already feeling the tears threaten. "He isn't easy to like, Albus. I don't like him. I love him."

Fawkes gave a soft cry in the sudden dead silence, and nestled his soft, brilliant head against her neck. She had to use every ounce of willpower and training not to let the tears fall, and after a few difficult moments the threat receded to a dull ache behind her eyes. Dumbledore drew a long breath.

"I see," he said. He got up, came around the desk, set his hands on her shoulders. "My dear child. My dear, dear child, I am so sorry. I have misjudged you."

"Don't," she said bitterly. "Please don't. I've been through this with myself enough times to know there isn't a happy ending. I've loved Severus Snape since I came here for the first time, and I will likely love him until I die, but I don't and won't expect anything to come of it. He doesn't love me. He doesn't love anything, except perhaps perfection and exactitude."

Dumbledore's hands tightened briefly on her shoulders, as if he would have spoken, but he merely sighed. She looked up at him, back at Fawkes, who blinked slowly at her. "Very well," said the Headmaster after a long moment. "We will not speak of this. What about the illness? What have you found out?"

Nastasya drew a shaky breath, glad for the change of subject. "I think it might have something to do with the theory of ghost sickness," she began, mentally thanking her students for finding out these tidbits for her. "The epidemic might have started as an ordinary viral infection, but I think the malevolent influence of the ghost on not only Snape but the entire school must have weakened us enough to make it really bad, or otherwise the virus itself was made more dangerous than it originally had been. In either case, the somatic effects are made worse and the body and mind are more vulnerable."

"So in order to speed recovery we need to remove the influence of the ghost," remarked Dumbledore.

"More importantly, we need to get him out of Snape's head."

"Well put, Nastasya," said her employer with a hint of a twinkle. "Now, you look exhausted. I suggest we all get a good night's sleep."

"A fine idea," she said, rising. Fawkes fluttered back to his perch with the faintest hint of reproach in his bearing. She managed a bit of a smile. Eventually this would all be over. Eventually.

_I was right. She hated me._

_ -No.—_

_ Go away. I cannot give you what you seek. None of us can._

_ -You have already given me enough. But I think I shall stay a little longer. It is pleasant here._

_ You are killing me. You are killing us all._

_ -I don't think so. I am merely exacting justice.—_

_ You have no grievance against us. She was yours entirely._

_ I can't breathe._

_ -You will go through worse.—_

_ ...help me..._

Classes the next day were a bad joke. Only eight of the thirty students on the roster showed up to her ten o'clock DaDA class, and fewer still made it to her one o'clock. Snape's Potions class, third period, was almost deserted. She ended up amusing the remaining students, and herself, by teaching them how to brew a Euphoria Potion; even though only two of them succeeded in creating the complete effect, the attempts of the rest of the class had enough power to cheer them all up considerably. She regarded them with a sort of affection from behind Severus's high desk, and it had nothing to do with the warming effect of the potion fumes.

"Do any of you _like_ Potions?" she asked, before realizing she was about to.

All five of the students looked up at her, in unison. "Sorry," she said. "That's irrelevant."

"No," said Ron Weasley, who had so far managed to survive the onslaught of the Ghost Flu. "I like Potions," he added, "actually, and I'd like to be better at it. But Professor Snape doesn't make it easy to like."

She sighed. "I know."

Neville Longbottom, whose father Nastasya had idolized in her Auror training days, piped up. "I'm awful at it," he said, happily, his misery gone under the sweet effect of the Euphoria Potion. "Absolutely hopeless."

She regarded him thoughtfully. "No you're not," she said, rising and coming around to his desk, staring at the dark red contents of his cauldron. "You've created a textbook Euphoria. In fact—" she broke off and inspected the four other cauldrons currently in use, "you've done the best out of everyone here."

"Really?" Longbottom's face was shining. She felt a tug at her heart, which was feeling particularly old and scarred and cynical. "You think so?"

"I know so," she said, scowling as best she could. "I took top of my class at Durmstrang three years running, and I know a perfect Euphoria Potion when I see one."

"But Professor Snape says I'm hopeless," Neville pointed out. Weasley nodded.

"Yeah, Snape's always picking on him. He was going to poison Trevor, his toad—would have, if Hermione hadn't helped out."

"I know Professor Snape's not an easy teacher," said Nastasya thoughtfully. "Neville, what's your best subject?"

"Herbology," he said quickly. "Professor Sprout says I'm rather good at it."

"I don't doubt that," said Nastasya. "What is it about Potions that scares you?"

"Snape," he said, easily and simply and truthfully. Nastasya sighed, passed a hand over her face.

"How would you like some extra tutoring in Potions?" she asked. "You're not hopeless, Neville, despite what Snape might say. Were you frightened you wouldn't be able to make the Euphoria Potion?"

"No," said Neville, confused. "Why?"

"Because that's why you do badly in Snape's classes," she said, realizing it. "Because you're afraid of failing."

"Hey, so am I," Weasley interjected, and the four other students in the room chorused their unanimity.

Nastasya looked at them. "Potions is very straightforward," she said, evenly. "All you need to do, if you want to succeed, is to follow the recipes carefully and not pay too much attention to Snape being insufferable, if you can."

There was a surprised silence. Weasley looked at her, red eyebrows raised. "Professor? Did I just hear what I thought I did?"

"Yes," said Nastasya unhappily. "Although you're not going to share this with anyone. If any of you decide you want extra Potions help, just come to me. I'll be happy to sort you out."

The lesson dispersed with smiles all round, which she realized was probably a first for a Potions class during Snape's time as teacher. She hoped, suddenly, that she could keep her promise; that if Longbottom or any of the others came to her for help, she would be able to help them. She had said nothing more than the truth: Potions _was_ a fairly simple subject, if you removed politics and intimidation from the classroom. It just required patience and concentration, which all Hogwarts students would have been forced to learn from day one.

When classes were over, she made her way down to Snape's dungeon once more, this time fairly confident that she could keep herself under control. Part of her mind was screaming the entire time she was close to him, but she was used to that; it was, again, her Auror training that helped her to control it. Snape was barely conscious when she came into the room, his breath coming in great painful ragged gasps.

_Pneumonia,_ she thought, feeling the fever-heat emanating from him, the rapid thready pulse. _I'm not surprised. This makes it more difficult, of course._

She debated speaking to Dumbledore, trying to have Severus moved to St Mungo's or somewhere else with more experience dealing with serious illness, but she knew Madame Pomfrey was as good a healer as any St. Mungo's mediwizard, and it would exhaust the patient to move him. She settled for brewing a strong Vitaris Tincture and conjuring up some very hot soup, and sending the more susceptible parts of her mind away while she did for him what any trained nurse would, and no more. He came up far enough through the levels of consciousness to swallow what she fed him, but lapsed back into fever-dreams almost immediately, plucking at the covers and muttering about green eyes and unfairness. Nastasya would have left quickly, but his burning hand found hers, and clung so tightly she couldn't bring herself to pry his fingers loose. She sat there with him, her own hand closed over his, until the drugs she'd given him began to take effect and he slid away again into sleep.

And, suddenly, she knew what she had to do.

"Headmaster?"

Dumbledore looked up from the drift of papers on his desk."Nastasya, my dear. How are you?"

"I've been better. I think I know how to stop Radu picking at us. How to free us, and give him peace."

The blue eyes didn't change, but she knew he was listening very, very carefully. "Yes?"

"You've got to put me into a deep trance. Dangerously deep. I need to be almost entirely free of my body."

Dumbledore rose, came around the desk to her. "That's risky."

"So's Snape's condition. He's got pneumonia, Albus, he's really ill. And the students. Have you been in the infirmary recently? I can't let this keep going."

He regarded her steadily. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. I think it's the only way, now. It's me Radu wants, anyway. He's only hurting Severus because he knows my name, and I believe he's jealous of that knowledge. If he thinks he can have me, or at least hurt me, then he might let the rest of you go."

The Headmaster's eyes narrowed, widened again. There was a very pregnant pause.

"Very well, Nastasya," he said. "Although I require you to be under Madame Pomfrey's care during the, ah, experiment, and I reserve the right to pull you out of it whenever I see fit."

She sighed. "As you wish, Headmaster. Let's go. I want to do this as soon as possible."

Nastasya lay down on a couch that had been hastily carried into Snape's dungeon quarters, and felt Poppy place the cold crystal amulet of the spirit-tracer on her forehead. The nurse and the Headmaster were the only ones present, besides her and Snape. She hadn't wanted to publicize this any more than necessary, and she knew Dumbledore agreed. Eyes closed, she heard Dumbledore begin to mutter the words of the trance-spell, and the world began to recede from her. It was an interesting experience. She lost feeling in her extremities first, as if she was suffering from frostbite; then her limbs went numb, and her entire body ceased to exist for her. There was nothing more than the darkness in which she found herself, and even the dark words she had heard were silenced. She floated in the blackness of utter sensory deprivation, and suddenly began to fall.

She was nothing more than a tiny spark in a sea of blackness, and the sea had no shores; it went on forever. In the blackness she was vaguely aware of another presence, wrapped in on itself, showing almost nothing to her searching gaze. She probed at the other presence, drew back at the sudden snarling stab of pain, and understood; the presence was Severus, as miserable as she had ever known him, trying desperately to hold on to his identity in the bewildering black. Almost, the rush of sympathy and sorrow overwhelmed her. Almost.

She drew back in time, and floated. She knew Radu would come to her. He had no choice.

-_Nadezhda-_ said a voice in her mind. A familiar voice, which she had loved once; a voice which had meant the world to her. She had thought she meant the world to him, and she had been wrong. –_Nadezhda. You left me.—_

_ I didn't leave you,_ she said. _I would have loved you._

_ -You would have left me just as my mother left me.—_

_ No._

_ -I loved you, and you would have left me.—_

_ Well,_ she retorted, getting angry, _you left me, and you married Lucire. Do you think I liked that? Do you think I liked losing you to her? _

_ -You never loved me-_ said Radu in her skull, the echoing voice of an old grievance. _–You gave your true-name to another long before you met me. You never loved me.—_

_ I did love you,_ she said. _I loved him first, and I love him still, but I love him the way I loved the sound of the ice cracking in the high glaciers, or the kestrel's cry on the spring wind. I loved him, but he never loved me, and I grew used to it._

_ -You did not- _said the voice. _–You went back to him. After the Death Eater. You went back to him.—_

_ I went back to teach,_ she cried. _To teach. I did not know he was there. I would not have returned if I had known I would have to see him again. I would not travel to Moldavia, for I feared I would see you, and I could not bear to see the man who had thrown me away and married my friend._

_ -Ah-_ he sighed. _–Then you did care.—_

_ Of course I cared._ She paused, thinking; it hurt. _What do you want, Radu? Why are you not at peace? Why have you come here, to hurt us?_

_ -Your name-_ he howled. _–Your true-name. I thought it was my gift alone.—_

_ How did you know?_

_ -I reached out for it, when I fell away from the world. I reached out for the only truly beautiful thing, the only true thing, I have ever known. And I found it not in your mind, but in another mind. A mind that had no right to that name. A mind that had hurt you, that you loved. I want your name back, Nadezhda.—_

She floated, curled in misery. _It is not yours to hold._

_ -I want your name.—_

And suddenly Nastasya had had enough, and even through the calming void of trance she felt the anger and the sorrow rise and crest. _You cannot have my name, Radu. But you can know why._

And she let down all her shields, one by one, until she hung in the blackness like a hawk on an updraft, and she let him understand. Memory after repressed memory poured out of her, images and tears and laughter and lost innocence. Her entire childhood, before ever she had come to Durmstrang and met his apple-green eyes with her storm-grey ones; all of the days and nights filled with Nabokov smiles, too young to know what she felt, too old to deny it; all the times she had cried into the green velvet of her Slytherin pillow, transfixed even in solitude by the power of his black-ice eyes and his silken voice, all the misery and the joy and the self-hatred and the ambition and the learning that had been her youthful acquaintance with Severus Snape, all of it came rushing out of her like water from a broken dam, leaving her high and dry and very much alone. There was silence in the blackness for the space of a dying heartbeat.

_Don't you like what you see?_ she asked, her bitterness surprising even herself. _Don't you like it? How magnificent my experience with him was? Are you not jealous of my supreme happiness with him?_

Radu was quiet.

_Do you still want my name? _she snapped. _Or will you be satisfied with the name of your loving wife, who wanted you before ever I grew to love you, and gave you more of herself than I ever could? Don't you owe Lucire that much, to stop pursuing me, even in death?_

_ -Did you weep for me?—_he demanded.

_I have had no chance to weep for you. I have had to save lives from your influence. I have had to do my job, Radu. I will do my weeping on my own. I think I have wept enough already for two lifetimes._

_ -Do you love me?—_

_ Yes. I love you._ That was true. He knew it was; she had let that, too, show, when she revealed herself to him. _But I cannot stop living because of it._

More silence, and she was beginning to feel less anger from that voice. _–What of him?—_

_ What of him? He is himself. He will always be._

_ -Does he love you?—_

_ Don't be ridiculous. He loves nobody. He knows my name because I was stupid and young enough to give it to him, and hope that he knew what that meant. I was wrong._

_ -No-_ said Radu. _–I don't think you were.—_

_ Please,_ she begged. _Please leave him alone. Him, and the rest of us. If it's me you want, then take me, do as you will. Just do not hurt the others any more._

And now the anger was gone, surprise and sorrow filling the void where it had been.

_-I would never hurt you, Nadezhda.—_

_ Then leave them alone. _She was very weary, and the tears were threatening her again; sorrow was rising in her like bile. _Let them be._

_ -Very well.—_

_ Go in peace, Radu. I loved you._

_ -I loved you too, Nadezhda.—_

She was weeping when she woke, hot tears almost imperceptible on her flushed cheeks. Madame Pomfrey would have spoken to her, but Dumbledore set a hand on her shoulder and guided her out of the room. "Be easy, Nastasya," he murmured over his shoulder as they left. "Rest."

She only cried the harder. There were no words for this. There never had been.

After what seemed like hours, she felt the world receding again, into the more pleasant nothingness of sleep.

Voices, in a grey void. A man's voice, low and hoarse and annoyed, and a woman's, taut with concern and lack of patience.

"For the last time, Poppy, I am _fine!_" Nastasya would have known that voice anywhere.

"You're not fine," she heard the nurse retort "You can scarcely sit up on your own. Now behave and drink your horrible medicine, or I will be forced to Stupefy you and pour it down your throat by force."

"I don't _need_ any medicine," said the first voice, petulantly, but it was a hoarse petulance, and the speaker went off into a fit of painful coughing.

"You haven't changed, you know. You said the same thing that day when you had to leave the NEWTs, and you were wrong then too. I don't know why I bother."

Nastasya rolled over, feeling sore all over, as if she'd gone ten rounds with Hagrid. Her skull felt rather as if someone had lined it with spikes, and her skin was very aware of the thread count in the sheets she lay under. Blearily, she opened her eyes, and found herself lying in the hospital wing. The slanted light of late afternoon threw luminous bars over her bed. Poppy was down at the other end of the ward, bending over another bed's dark-haired occupant, muttering. She probed apprehensively at her memory, and found out that she didn't really want to remember what had recently happened; it was like a sore tooth she was wary of antagonizing. She curled up on her side, and felt sleep overtake her again, covering her like a pleasantly warm blanket.

Harry woke up, and was surprised to find that he felt a great deal better. The ward was quieter around him, and as he sat up and looked around he realized that almost everyone was gone. Whatever the epidemic was, it clearly hadn't lasted very long. He reached out for his glasses, and the fuzzy shapes of the world sprang into clear focus.

Malfoy was still occupying one of the beds close to the office, his pale hair only a few shades darker than the pillows it spread over, his face pale and closed and looking rather young. For a moment Harry saw him as merely a boy, not the mortal enemy he had always been.

He shook away the thought. Hermione was asleep in the bed to his immediate right, and farther down the row he thought he could make out a dark-red head of hair that was strangely familiar. _Professor Serenskaya?_

He thought he could remember hearing another teacher's voice, while he lay in the half-doze of the fever. A silky voice, raised in petulant argument.

_Shit,_ he thought. _Snape was in here? He must be human after all. That's five Galleons I owe Lee Jordan._

But there was no triumph in the thought of Snape suffering, for some reason. A lot seemed to have changed while he was off in fever-dreams. He sighed, stretched. He was hungry.

Harry slid out of bed, padding across the infirmary floor in his nightshirt, and found Madame Pomfrey writing notes in her office. She looked up as he knocked on the open door.

"Harry," she said, smiling. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," he said truthfully. "Can I go? I'm hungry."

She rose, came around the desk, and laid the back of her hand on his forehead, frowning thoughtfully. "Your temperature's normal," she told him. "I suppose so. Take it easy for a few days, Harry. You don't want a relapse."

"I will," he promised. "What about Hermione? How's she?"

"She'll do. She came in the night after you did, Harry. I expect she'll be fine by tomorrow."

He threw a glance back over his shoulder towards Malfoy, but didn't say anything. Madame Pomfrey saw the glance. "He'll be fine, too. He had a much more severe case than you did, Harry."

He shrugged. "I'll be going, then."

"Off you go. Take care."


	4. 4

CHAPTER 4

_What's mine is yours_

_ You can have all of it_

_ and I'll learn to bear..._

Hole

This time when Nastasya awoke she was alone in the ward, and the blue dusk of autumn filled the air. She stretched, popping stiff muscles in her shoulders and back, and levered herself up to a sitting position. She was surprised and pleased to find that she no longer felt quite so bruised, and that her head wasn't clanging with every motion; she still felt rather used and shaky, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it had been.

She pushed back the covers and got up, her toes shrinking from the cold stone floor. Her robes had been laid over a chair by her bed, which she was grateful for; it looked as if someone had washed them, as the dingy stains of phoenix ash were gone from the sleeves and hem. Dressing hurriedly to escape as much of the chill as possible, she pulled on her boots and twisted up her hair into its knot before making her way down the lines of beds to Poppy's little office. She was rather glad it was dark; she had no desire to catch sight of her reflection, and see how wretched she really looked.

The nurse was asleep at her desk, head pillowed on her arms, snoring very quietly. Nastasya smiled in the dark, thinking how very much Poppy deserved some rest. She had no idea how long she'd been out, but in the days leading up to her trance the school had required Poppy's services more than ever before, and she had had no time to relax. Tiptoeing past the office door, Nastasya left the hospital wing, and hurried down the massive staircases to the Great Hall. She was _hungry_, as if she hadn't eaten for a week.

Which, she thought wryly, she might not have. Spirit-trances took a great deal out of the participants, as she recalled from the papers she'd done in her seventh year at Durmstrang; once the trance was over, the cumulative effects of it tended to overwhelm the participant much like amphetamine crash in Muggle drug-users, and sleeping for a week was quite possible.

The muffled roar of the Great Hall told her that the student body was back in action. She avoided Peeves, who was hanging upside down in the doorway and making extremely rude faces at her, and hurried towards the staff table. Head after head turned to watch her as she walked, and the tide of conversation ebbed as everyone's attention transferred itself to her. Dumbledore raised his goblet to her in a toast, and she had to walk up the last few steps to the dais with the gazes of every teacher (except Snape) fixed firmly upon her. As she took her seat, the conversation slowly resumed, and she could feel the blush begin to fade from her cheeks.

Remus Lupin leaned over and covered her hand with his. _He_ certainly looked better. "Thanks, Nastasya," he said quietly. "It must have been hard."

"Let's just say I hope I don't ever have to do anything like that again," she muttered. Lupin grinned.

"I doubt you will. Unless you've got any other dead would-be husbands whose love for you transcends death?" Dumbledore had clearly explained everything to the faculty. She wondered if the students were also privy to that information.

"Not as far as I know," she said, and grinned back. On her other side, McGonagall laughed.

"You'd have a job forgetting something like that," she pointed out. "Steak?"

"Gods, yes," Nastasya hissed. "I'm starving."

Lupin lifted an eyebrow. "Well, you have been out for four days. It was astonishing how quickly everyone got better, as if someone had turned off the epidemic."

McGonagall looked briefly distracted. "Almost everyone."

"What?" Nastasya swallowed. She suddenly knew what McGonagall was going to say, even without glancing down the staff table to a certain place setting.

"It's Severus. Poppy cleared the pneumonia, but he's still not well."

"But I thought..."

"He's not strong," said McGonagall quietly. "He had TB the year after you left, Nastasya, and he's never quite been the same since."

Nastasya put down her fork, suddenly not hungry at all. _He had TB? I...oh, gods, I didn't know..._

McGonagall sighed, gave Nastasya a little smile. "He recovered, of course; we've got several treatments for tuberculosis that are very effective, and he only had to repeat half a year. But he was always susceptible to illness, afterwards. He would never admit it. He wouldn't accept having a weakness. I remember him pushing himself so hard, in my Transfigurations classes, that I spoke to him about it. He said he knew he could do better."

"None of us knew about it," said Lupin suddenly. "The kids in his year, that is. I only realized he was sick when he had a hemorrhage in the middle of the Arithmancy NEWT." His brown eyes were very far away. "We all hated him, of course, you know that, but when we found out...well, even James was sort of ashamed of some of the things we'd done to him. Not for long, but I do remember James looking at me and Sirius and just giving us this sigh."

Nastasya began to eat again, methodically. Of course. It explained some of why Snape was so unpleasant to everyone. If he was constantly feeling ill, it would be harder than ever to keep his vicious temper under control. McGonagall seemed to shake the past off with a visible effort. "Why don't we talk about something else?" she said heartily. "The Quidditch Cup seems to be on its way to Gryffindor again, don't you think?"

Night had thickened by the time dinner was over. Nastasya excused herself as quickly as was polite, and hurried outside to the grounds. The moon hadn't risen, and only the stars lent some illumination to the vault of heaven as she shed her cloak and took wing.

Hawk-vision is different from human vision, a thousand times sharper and focused on the tiny twitches of movement in the world below. She soared up above the ramparts of Hogwarts, wings beating lazily in the last updrafts of the waning day's warmth, and alighted on the lightning rod fixed to the very top of the Astronomy Tower. From here she could just about see the dim glow of the nearest Muggle town, over the hills to the south; and far down below, in the grounds of the school itself, the tiny moving form of Hagrid sprang out to her eye against the background of dark grass. She could see everything, from the moss that grew in the cracks of the old tiles on the tower to the curtains blowing from Professor Trelawney's North Tower apartment windows to the signs in Hogsmeade swinging gently back and forth in the night breeze.

The hawk was a mote of starlit darkness in a world of dark; in this dimness her red wings were a dark violet-brown, the gleam of her eyes an inky black. She flew silently through glass-clear air, as one with the night, the world beneath her turning gently as if to show her its glories out of sheer pride. Each silvery leaf in the forest turned itself up as she passed, shivering to let her see both sides of its beauty; the night-mouse that crouched frozen in terror as her shadow caressed it was nevertheless posed to effect against the cobbled courtyard. She was an arbiter of the night, and a part of it, and those who looked up tonight to mark her passing felt strangely honored to have seen her there, and to have been seen.

Nastasya landed, as the clock in the village struck ten, and reluctantly walked back inside. Some of the tension of the past hours had waned, as she had soared and swung across the sky, but she still felt strung far too tightly as she hurried down the steps from the entrance hall towards Snape's dungeon domain. _He wasn't in the hospital wing when I woke up_ _this time,_ she thought. _Presumably they'd moved him there, and he took it upon himself to move back. He would hate being surrounded by others, when he was weak. Hate it._

By now the charm to unlock his door was automatically rising to her lips, but she contained herself and knocked at the door in a civilized fashion instead.

"Who is it?" snarled a familiar voice.

"Nastasya."

There was a brief silence, during which she desperately wanted to run away but managed to stop herself, and then Snape unlocked the door with a loud clunk and let her in. "What do you want?" he inquired unpleasantly.

She sat down, uninvited. Now that she had managed to control the urge to flee, she was determined to see this through. "How are you, Severus?" He didn't _look_ well, but then he never did; he was wrapped in a black dressing gown with the Slytherin crest embroidered on the breast pocket, and his tangled hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. The circles under his eyes had not diminished in the slightest, and the eyes themselves were still fever-bright.

"Fine. Is that all you came to ask? I _do_ have work to do, you know."

She matched his scowl with an equally vicious one. "I'm sure you do. Minerva tells me you're still sick."

"My health is none of your concern," he sneered at her. She was suddenly visited by a memory so strong as to make her gasp: sitting in the Slytherin common room, years ago, just after she'd told him how she felt, and asking him what he was thinking. _"My thoughts are none of your concern,"_ he had informed her.

"No, it's not. What I am _concerned_ about is whether or not I will have to take your Potions classes again this week. I'm not particularly thrilled with your students' attitudes."

Snape arched an eyebrow at her. "Neither am I. They're a bunch of useless little brats with the Potions aptitude of pickled toads."

"That's funny," she said, beginning to be angry. "Because when I had to sub for you the other day, I set them a Euphoria Potion, and they seemed to have little or no trouble brewing that. I'm sure you're aware of the complexity of the Euphoria Potion. Moreover, they seemed quite interested in the lesson and very motivated to learn."

"That's because they were high," snapped Snape, collapsing into a chair, one hand pressing his chest as if it hurt. "What on earth were you doing letting them mess about with Euphoria when it clearly states on my syllabus that they were to study secondary silicate reagents for the rest of the month?"

"This may come as a surprise to you, _Severus_, but people tend to learn better when they're not miserable. Your students are terrified of you, and even if they'd had any interest in the subject beforehand, your classes kill any desire to learn Potions. They're not intrinsically bad at it; they're bad at it when you're terrorizing them."

"Get out of my office," Snape said, but there was only a little danger in his voice. "I will not sit here and listen to you criticize the way I teach."

"You know," said Nastasya, "I rather think you will. Because I desperately want to know _why_ you use intimidation as a tactic so often, and I'm not going to leave until you explain it to me."

He sat forward in the chair, fixed her with that glittering, merciless gaze. He was very white, and two blotches of hectic color burned high on his spar-like cheekbones. "Nastasya," he said, quietly. "I'm losing my patience. I suggest you get out of my office before it snaps completely."

A week ago, she would have fled, and counted herself lucky to have been given the opportunity. Now, she merely met that gaze with her own flinty regard, folded her arms, and said, "No."

"Nastasya—"

"_No_. What is it about you, Severus? What is it that drives you to be like this? You're far too intelligent not to see what it's doing. You're free of the Death Eaters now. You have no reason to pretend you're still on Voldemort's side. Why are you acting like you're still his creature? Why are you making your students hate Potions, and hate you?"

Snape stood up, his eyes huge and burning, even the patches of color on his cheekbones going white with absolute fury, his hands clenched into fists, his mobile mouth twisted in a snarl. Nastasya felt part of herself go cold in fear as he advanced on her. _"You stupid girl,"_ he hissed. _"How dare you speak of that? How dare you?"_ He was standing over her, like rage made into flesh, and she wondered if he would actually hurt her. _"I...AM...NOT... VOLDEMORT'S...CREATURE!"_ he screamed, and choked on the scream, doubled over, coughing so hard that he would have fallen had he not reached out for the arm of the chair behind him. He was still trying to speak through the fit, but she couldn't make out the words; he could hardly breathe, and the coughing was desperate, hysterical. Abruptly Nastasya rose and went to him, muttering the words of a charm as she set her hands on his chest. She felt the energy drain out of her into him, like blood, and was lightheaded when she let him go and stood up again. His coughing was slowly easing; he pushed the damp hair out of his face and looked up at her through streaming eyes, his face white with pain.

"You ought to be in bed," she said, levelly. "How did you get Poppy to let you out?"

"I didn't," he rasped, painfully, still panting. "I left. I _am_ a master of this school, you know. Pomfrey doesn't have any authority over me."

She sighed, turned away. "I'll take your classes for this week, Severus. I'll even keep to your syllabus, if it'll make you relax enough to get well."

He was quiet, except for the rattle of his breath. She twitched the folds of her cloak into order, and was about to leave when he called her back.

"Do you...do you really think I'm still...?" he gasped, staring at her. "Do you?"

"I don't know what to think," she told him quietly.

He held her gaze for a long moment, her clear grey eyes looking into his veiled black ones, before dropping his face into his hands. "Oh, God," he muttered. "You do hate me."

Nastasya felt suddenly as if her skin was too small; the world seemed to rush and ebb around her, and a buzzing rang in her ears. _Don't pass out_. _Not now. Deep breaths._

"What?" she managed. Snape didn't look up. She crossed the room to him in two long strides, knelt down by his chair. "_What_?"

"You hate me, don't you," he said, his voice weary and rough and full of pain. "Of course you do. I've done my damnedest to make you hate me."

She let her hand creep up to his shoulder. "Severus, you're not well, you should be in bed..."

He let her help him up from the chair, leaned on her as they walked into his bedchamber. It was as if, with the anger, all of his shields had been swept away, or burned into ashes; he moved as if sleepwalking, all the fight and life gone from him. He did not complain when she drew off his boots and made him lie down, and covered him with the quilts; he did not complain when she made him drink coltsfoot, comfrey and willow-salic, and he didn't even rouse enough to scowl at her when she pulled up a chair beside his bed and proceeded to stare at him.

"Severus? Tell me what's hurting you. Tell me about it. I don't hate you." _That at least is true. It might be easier if I did, though._

And, wondrously, lulled into some sort of complacency by her ministrations and by the drugs she had made him swallow, he closed his eyes and began to tell her a story.

"I was the loser," Snape said, quietly. "Every school has to have at least one; one child who is quiet and unliked and studious and unpopular. I was the loser until I came here, and I was a loser even at Hogwarts. I wasn't like _James_, or Remus, or Sirius, or even Peter. I had no friends. I had acquaintances, and colleagues, but no friends at all, unless you count yourself." Nastasya pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders, leaning forward. She knew this would be a long, long story.

"I went to the Thornicombe Prep magic school for four years before attending Hogwarts," he continued. "They needed someone to look down on, someone different. I was that child. I was tall and skinny even back then, and I already had sallow skin and greasy, elf-locked hair. I had never cared much about my appearance. Not after my mother died." He paused, and she could see the effort it took to set aside that memory and continue with the narrative. "I looked like they needed me to look. They called me a Death Eater before they even understood what the title meant. 'Sevvie is a Death Eater,' was one of the playground chants. 'Tie Sevvie Up and Go Home for Tea' was perhaps the most popular pastime during my time there. You wouldn't understand, Nastasya. You were loved and cherished all throughout your childhood, and you had the added advantage of making friends easily. I had nothing." He paused, coughing. "And I realized after a while that it was a great deal easier to accept what they said than to contest it. They went away if I agreed with their insults and epithets. It's less fun taunting someone if they don't seem to be hurt by it, and I was very, very good at pretending after a year of this. I learned that they would leave me alone if I didn't try to react. Taunting me with 'Sevvie is a Death Eater' wasn't so triumphant if I answered 'Yes, I am.' They'd come up with new ones, though. They kept on doing it until I left the school."

She looked down at her clasped hands. It was true that her childhood had been relatively easy: being Kallikrates Serensky's daughter—the child of one of Russia's most famous and most feared Aurorsbought her some renown even among the cruellest of playground bullies. Severus swallowed, winced at the pain in his throat. She turned to the table, poured him a glass of water, silently. When he spoke again, his voice was full of such bitterness that Nastasya wanted to look away.

"You can't go through four years of listening to that, and pretending to agree, without beginning to believe it yourself. Why, after all, would they be saying things like that, if there was no grain of truth to it? I _must _be stupid and useless and ugly, and all the rest of it, since they were pretty unanimous in calling me that. I had just about convinced myself that they were right when I left Thornicombe to come to Hogwarts. I expected the same treatment from the students here. The Hat put me in Slytherin, which didn't surprise me, seeing as how my fellow students had picked me as an evil wizard from the beginning. Oh yes, I knew what Slytherin meant. What it had become, over the years. To be sorted into Slytherin meant that you were cunning and unpleasant and quite possibly recruitable for Voldemort's army of darkness. It didn't surprise me, but I didn't particularly like it." He sighed. "And I wasn't at all surprised, either, to find James Potter and his crew treating me exactly as I'd been treated at Thornicombe. I suppose I was their loser, as I'd been for the whole school before. I was the one they blamed everything on, the one they mocked when they couldn't find a good excuse for their punishments, the one they laughed at because they needed someone to look down on, the target of their pranks. Remember, I was fresh from Thornicombe, where I'd begun to believe everything they'd told me: that I was pretty much a waste of space, and nobody would ever like me. I took the Hat's decision as just another piece of evidence proving what they'd implied at my other school. Being stupid, ugly, useless, pathetic, and unpleasant, I assumed that nobody could ever like me, and consciously shut myself off from trying to make friends. Why bother?"

Nastasya wanted to hold him. Wanted to stem the tide of bitterness. But she knew that he had begun the story, and he would have to finish it. This was something he had to do. He'd probably never told anyone about this before.

She wished she could say something to make it better, but knew it wasn't possible, and satisfied herself with merely sitting back in the chair and regarding him silently.

"Potter and his gang quickly targeted me as their arch-nemesis. It was a kind of challenge, I suppose; I think I must have wanted to be worse than they portrayed me to be, as a kind of proof that I was more than they believed. I don't know. But I hated them, Nastasya. I hated them with such vitriol it even frightened me. By this time I was fairly well settled in my Hogwarts persona, cold and unfeeling and superior, and I wouldn't have changed that even if I could. It was armor. I suppose it still is. Being icy and sarcastic is a protective strategy."

"I know," she murmured.

"Do you?" he mused. He looked at her, his eyes dark with remembered pain and present humiliation. "Perhaps you do, Nastasya. It makes it seem as if the slings and arrows bounce off, I suppose. I often wondered, when I was young, why no one else seemed to have this happen to them. I expect it did; they were better at dealing with it than me, or their shields were more impenetrable. It's rather conceited to assume I was the only child ever to have been _teased_." He closed his eyes. She was rather glad of it; that direct obsidian gaze was beginning to do bizarre things to her innards. She knew he didn't just mean "teased;" he meant "tormented," or perhaps "tortured." Children could be far, far crueller than adults. She had seen it happen.

Snape turned his head on the pillows and coughed hackingly, the lines on his face standing out in pain. "In any case, Potter and his Marauders had picked me as their enemy, and none of us got any peace from that day forward. I split my time between the library, studying as many curses and hexes as I could, and the Slytherin common room, plotting how to use them. A few of the older SlytherinsRosier and Wilkes, and Lestrangebegan to take some notice of me, and I explained to them that several of the Gryffindors needed to be, ah, disciplined, and I was figuring out ways to do just that. They liked that. They thought it showed true inbred Slytherin malice. I don't think I understood just how bigoted they were, not back then. It took me a few years to understand their motivation, but when I did, it was too late; I was already in far too deep to escape with any ease." He swallowed, painfully. "They brought me to Lucius Malfoy."

Nastasya tried to remember. "How old were you?"

"This was my second year. Your first. Malfoy was a year older than me, and firmly ensconced as the leader of the Slytherins, even at his age. Seventh-years bowed down to Lucius, partly because he was a Malfoy and as such the scion of one of the oldest wizarding families, and rich, and influential, and partly because he had that particular kind of charisma that draws people to it like moths to a flame, and will eventually destroy them. I hated Malfoy. I still do. But I couldn't deny his power. Malfoy took me under his wing and made me his creature. I ran errands for him; I wrote a few of his papers for him, notably Potions essays, and I was one of his spies. In return, Malfoy offered me some protection from the rest of the school, all of whom hated me roundly by then, and I suppose I was grateful to him for providing me with a niche. At Thornicombe, I had been the outcast; at Hogwarts, I was not alone, and it looked as if I had friends of a sort."

Nastasya closed her eyes for a long moment. Malfoy had had his claws in Severus even back then; she would guess it had been Malfoy who had introduced him to the Death Eater brethren, and Malfoy to whom he had had to report even after renouncing Voldemort's service, and pretend to worship him nonetheless. She remembered Lucius Malfoy as being even lovelier than his son; his great wintry eyes and silvery hair had once haunted her dreams as they had haunted the dreams of almost every heterosexual female student at Hogwarts during his time there (and possibly some of the male students, too). Malfoy's beauty had been astonishing; his cruelty was breathtaking. She had once watched him deal with a young Ravenclaw girl who had been brave and stupid enough to ask him to the Yule Ball. She had hidden behind a suit of armor, unwilling to interrupt the conversation she had accidentally blundered upon, and watched through the empty visor as he verbally destroyed his young admirer, a look of exquisite pleasure on that angel's face, his long delicate hands gesturing elegantly as he explained to her that there was no possible way he could demean himself by appearing in public with a Flobberworm such as herself. The awful thing about it had been that he was _convincing_; that even Nastasya had almost begun to believe that the Ravenclaw girl had made a horrible mistake and he was being kind by correcting her. At length he had dismissed her, and she had fled, her harsh retching sobs echoing down the passage as she ran from him. Malfoy, left alone, had allowed an exquisite smile to curve his delicate mouth, and left the room with the comfortable pride of one who knows he is superior to every living thing. Nastasya had felt so sick after watching this performance that she'd hurried to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and waited to vomit, leaning her sweaty forehead against the cool white tile. The urge had passed, but the absolute detestation of Malfoy had remained; after that, she had mercifully never been visited by dreams of his huge grey-violet eyes, thick-lashed as a girl's, or that beautiful sneering mouth. She had avoided him like the plague ever since.

Severus hadn't had that luxury.

"Malfoy was compelling," he was saying. "Compelling, and horrible at the same time. Like a vampire, I suppose. I wasn't exactly happy to be his creature, but it afforded me some protection, and I was good at what he needed me to do. Then there was you." He opened his eyes again, stared at her. "You were so bloody innocent, Nastasya, and I felt so much older than you and as if I knew so much more...I suppose I have Malfoy to thank for what I did to you, too."

She managed to keep her face straight, with an effort. _What I did to you._

"I was not lovable, Nastasya. You of all people should be aware of that. I was not lovable, and I did not..._could not_...love anyone in return. When you approached me, I had no idea what to do, and I fell back on the things I knew best: coldness, sarcasm, irony and dislike. I pushed you away, Nastasya, because I didn't know what else to do. I didn't feel anything for anyone, back then. I couldn't afford to feel anything; it would have been a break in my defenses, a breach through which the taunting and the torture would have been able to hurt me again. I couldn't afford to let that happen." He closed his eyes, regarding the insides of his eyelids with equanimity. "I'd spent too long building up those defenses to let them down for anybody. I pushed you away, which pleased Malfoy no end...he hated you, you know, Nastasya, because of all the Slytherin girls you never approached him on bended knee to beg his favor, and I honestly think he rather wanted you to...and proceeded to dig myself deeper into what he called the Slytherin brotherhood. I think my rejecting you was my final test in Lucius's eyes. He believed, once I'd done that, that I was..._worthy_...of his continued favor. You left, which did me a favor, Nastasya, as I could hardly bear to see you, see what I'd thrown away, and Malfoy's control over me solidified. It was just after he'd graduated, when I was finishing my sixth year, that he finally approached me about the Death Eaters, and Voldemort's service." He coughed again, dryly, painfully, and Nastasya bit her lip with mirrored pain, consciously _not thinking_ about what Malfoy might have felt for her.

"You shouldn't be talking," she said. "I'm sorry."

"No. I've got to finish this. I've come too far." He took the glass of water off the table, downed it. "What did I have to lose? I'd managed to push away every single human being who might have redeemed me; I had no friends, no one who..._loved_...me, nothing in the Light to hold on to. Besides, it was clear to me that Voldemort was rising again, and I wanted to be on the winning side in the fight I knew was on its way. Before Harry Potter, it seemed as if the Dark would win, hands down. Before Harry Potter, my life was a great deal simpler." The cough shook him again. He began to talk faster, trying to finish what he had to say. "I...wasn't well, my final year at Hogwarts. I had to repeat half the year, and that gave me more time to think about my choices. I joined the Death Eaters. Malfoy vouched for me. I remember the day the Dark Mark was burned into my arm as one of the more satisfying of my young life. I had a purpose, you see. I'd never had a purpose before. A few years passed, and I think I must have lost part of my mind, because I enjoyed what we did. I _enjoyed_ it, Nastasya. I truly felt pleasure in the pain we inflicted and the damage we caused. I was proud to stand in Voldemort's circle and to hear that high cold voice praise my name. '_Severus Snape,_' he'd say. '_You are my youngest Death Eater, and my best._' I lived for that voice." His own voice had thickened with disgust. "And then Harry Potter happened. I was in Ireland at the time, destroying some old and venerable Light talismans carved into an ancient tomb, when it happened. I remember the Mark burning white-hot on my skin, the agony it sent through me. I must have passed out, because the next thing I remember is waking up in the rain with lightning striking all round me and the remnants of the tomb shattered to pieces at my feet. I Apparated to the meeting point we'd agreed on. Malfoy broke the news to me that Voldemort had been defeated. We _wept_ for him, Nastasya. For Merlin's sake, we _wept._"

She clasped her hands more tightly in her lap to keep from reaching out to him.

"We scattered, going into hiding, some of us renouncing Voldemort then and there, but most of us remaining loyal. Not loyal enough to face Azkaban, in most cases. The Lestranges were an exception. Malfoy and I re-entered normal wizarding life. I attended some of the clandestine meetings he arranged of the remaining Death Eater brethren. It was almost two years after Voldemort vanished that I finally realized what I had been doing, and made a new decision."

"What changed?"

"I grew up," he said. "I had been sixteen or so when I first came under Voldemort's thrall. I was past twenty-three when I woke up to the thing I had become. Seven years of murdering and torturing had gone by. I don't know exactly when I realized I no longer wanted to be what I was; I think I had just distanced myself enough from the misery of my school years to realize that hurting other people did not, in fact, fix the memory of my own pain. I had just about convinced myself that it did." He paused. "No. I'm lying. I know what changed my mind."

"Malfoy," she said. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

"How did you know?"

She shrugged. "I've got a little clairvoyance in me."

He snorted. "It was Malfoy, all right. 1982; a New Year's Eve party at his Derbyshire country manor. I remember loving those parties once. Malfoy had some contacts in the Muggle underworld, and he'd introduced us to the wonders of cocaine and heroin, as well as busloads of underage Muggle prostitutes. I was never particularly taken with the orgy aspect of Malfoy's parties, but I do remember absolutely loving the drugs. I had been wandering around the party with a head full of his incomparable blow, in search of a drink, when I came upon Malfoy and one of the whores he'd bought for the house." He swallowed convulsively. "Malfoy wasn't just fucking her. He was..._eating _her."

"You mean...?"

"I mean he had bitten off large chunks of her face," said Snape sickly. "She was screaming, silently. He'd put a Quietus Charm on the room, so I didn't know anyone was even in there; but he was also far too smashed to remember to lock the door, and I walked in on them. He never knew I was there. She saw me, I think, and I remember the look in her eyes; she was so far gone in pain and horror that those eyes were little more than an animal's, but I can never forget the look in them as I backed out of the room and closed the door. I was sick several times, standing outside that room and knowing what was going on inside, and _not being able to do anything about it._ I should have marched in there and pulled Malfoy off the girl...what was left of her...and killed him. But I couldn't."

He was rather green, reliving the memory. Nastasya felt deadly sick herself. "When I could stop retching, I ran out of Malfoy's house. I ran until I collapsed in the snow, quite unable to help myself, and I think I must have stayed there for almost a day before I could get my head together enough to Apparate back home. I was sick for almost a month. I...well, I'd had TB my last year at school, and it pretty much ruined my lungs. That was another fringe benefit of working for Voldemort: he'd given me a charm that protected me from getting ill again, which was entirely self-serving on his part, since I was no use to him confined to bed, but it certainly made my life a great deal easier. Not even Voldemort's charm saved me this time, though. While I was recovering, I had a lot of time to think about what I was going to do. Again and again, the image of Malfoy raping the girl, his beautiful mouth all scarlet with her blood, came back to me. I hadn't been able to save her. I vowed that I'd spend the rest of my life working against people like Malfoy. Against evil."

"Why did you come back to Hogwarts?"

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I honestly don't know. It was as if something was drawing me back, gently but firmly. I had little choice. I met with Dumbledore, and I couldn't stop myself explaining everything to him. He looked at me..." Snape broke off, his eyes meeting hers, imploringly. "You have to understand nobody had ever looked at me like that before, Nastasya. It wasn't pity. It was compassion. Compassion, and I think I saw respect. I had never commanded respect from anyone. Ever. And no one had ever seen me as worthy of compassion, either. I would die for Dumbledore."

"I know," she said, simply. "We all would."

"I hadn't meant to ask for a job. I think I just wanted to talk to him, to make it so I wasn't the only one who knew these things. He offered the Potions job to me anyway, and I refused. I told him that I was still nominally a Death Eater, and that he shouldn't trust me to teach at Hogwarts. He smiled. Nastasya, he _smiled_ at me. That smile...He said that I wasn't a Death Eater anymore. That I had renounced Voldemort. He said that the job offer was contingent on my seeming to remain a Death Eater and acting as a spy for Light into the works of Malfoy and his creatures. I could redeem myself through helping the side of good. He didn't say that, but it was clear."

"So you became a spy?"

"I became a spy. It wasn't easy, keeping Malfoy convinced that I was still Voldemort's servant, and it required me to be as unpleasant and vindictive as I could be to my students. I hate it, Nastasya, but it's become part of me. It's _who I am._ I have to show favoritism to Malfoy's spawn. You've no idea how difficult that's been. Every time I see Draco's face I think of his father with a mouthful of blood."

She looked away. "But your name's been cleared, Severus. Malfoy's got no power over you now."

He laughed, a harsh dry bark of a laugh. "Oh, no, Nastasya. Malfoy will have power over me until I die. You don't forget the oaths you swear as a Death Eater, to help and abet your fellow Death Eaters as long as you live. I would happily see Malfoy dead, but I can't touch him. And it doesn't matter if the Ministry no longer considers me a danger, or if I no longer have to pretend I serve the Dark Lord. I have become a certain person, and I can't escape that persona now. It's been too damn long to change."

"But you're not what you seem to be," she insisted. "You're not cold and heartless and cruel."

"No," he said simply. "But everything is easier if I pretend to be. It saves a lot of trouble. And it's still a defense mechanism. I've been using it so long it's become part of me, Nastasya. I don't think I could survive without that pretense. It's armor."

She was silent. His breath caught painfully, and he coughed, muffling it behind his fist. Suddenly the trials and tribulations of the past few days caught up with Nastasya, and a cold hand closed under her diaphragm, and she simply couldn't stop the tears. Her sobs tore out of her, crushing her with sickening power; she doubled over in the chair, pressing her fingers against her face in a protective cage to stop her head from bursting. Before, she had cried for herself and for Radu; now she was crying for Severus and what he had been through. No one man should have to bear so much. The tears blinded her, and the great tearing sobs were making her feel sick.

She felt a burning hand on her forehead, smoothing away the hair that was escaping once again from its pins, and she was drawn forward and down to rest her face against soft robes, and felt the rhythm of a heartbeat pulse beneath her cheek. Strong arms crept around her, held her fast, as she cried as if she would never be able to stop; and in a way she was grateful for the tears, since she could not think at all through them, and she knew she would not be able to be calm about being held by Severus Snape, if she allowed herself to truly comprehend what was going on. She merely lay against his chest, and wept as if her heart would break.

She didn't know how much time had passed when she began to calm down; his hand was still gently stroking her head, as he might caress a frightened animal, and his arms had not released their hold around her shoulders. She stirred, pulled away from him, and those arms tightened very briefly before letting her go. She could not look at him. She knew she must look like a harpy, her eyes swollen and red-rimmed, her face blotched and stained with tears. "I'm sorry," she said thickly, regarding her clasped hands. He made a noise that could have been exasperation.

"Nadezhda," he told her, acidly, "I think I have been more than patient with you. Now stop acting like a silly child and look at me."

The sharp tone was exactly what she needed. Her body obeyed before her mind could object, and she found herself looking into his black-onyx eyes, and was once again transfixed by them. "What do you want?" she said.

"I should have thought it was fairly obvious," he snapped. "I want you to tell me why you're crying."

"You don't think _that'_s obvious?" she retorted, stung into some semblance of control. "You may be terribly clever at Potions, Severus Snape, but you're one of the most obtuse men on the face of the earth if you can't tell that I'm desperately in love with you."

She felt an entirely reprehensible sting of pleasure at the widening of those bitter-mere eyes. She'd never managed to surprise him before. She hadn't thought it could be done. A moment later, she sighed in resignation as his shock threw him into another coughing fit. _I don't know why I told him. I wish I hadn't._

"You what?" he gasped, one hand pressing his chest.

"You heard me." She folded her arms and looked away. He fought for control, managed to stop the fit. One long finger reached out and tipped up her chin, so that she was forced to meet his gaze.

"Nadezhda," he said, and she was aware of the name he used, "am I delirious?"

Frowning, she pulled out her wand and muttered something, and a red light flashed through the room and was gone. "No. You're far from well, but you're as lucid as I am."

"Ah," he said. "Good."

"Why?"

"Because I'd hate to think that this was a dream. Because I really, really don't want to wake up from it."

She goggled at him. He made an inarticulate noise, and pulled her to him, and kissed her so hard her head swam.


	5. 5

CHAPTER 5

_I'll get me to a mount of myrrh, and there I'll lay me down_

_ For water cannot quench my love, nor floods cannot it drown_

_ My love is fair as the moon, she's bright as the sun_

_ O stir not up nor waken, love, lest you should come to harm._

Steeleye Span

Some hours later, she left his dungeon quarters, feeling as if the old world she had inhabited was nothing more than a dream, and she had woken to meet an entirely new existence. Her thoughts were cracked and glittery as broken glass as she made her way up the long marble staircase to her second-floor office, and the only thing that kept coming into her mind was a snatch of a Muggle poem she'd once come across, back at Durmstrang, when the world was younger and much more simple.

_Raise me a dais of silk and gold; hang it with vair and purple dyes_

_ Because the birthday of my life has come: my love has come to me._

Nastasya...no, _Nadezhda_, now, walked into her office, sat down behind the desk. She could still taste the urgency of his lips on hers; her skin didn't seem to want to relinquish the memory of his touch. She could feel the magic of those long slim fingers holding her as if he'd never let her go. She wanted to fly. She wanted to fly higher than she'd ever flown before, fly to the moon and dance on its silver surface with utter mindless happiness, sing out her heart to the airless vault of deep heaven. She felt as if she had been handed a star, as if she had held its radiance in the prison of her fingers. For the first time in her life, Nadezhda felt beautiful.

Slipping off the heavy black teacher's robes, she stood before the window in her tunic and trousers, and flung wide the casement to let in the sharp scent of the autumn night. She unfastened the tunic, letting it fall to the floor, and stepped out of her leggings, standing pure and naked in the soft wind of the night. Her white body was alive with the song of the night, her nipples hard and sharp as little knives, as she climbed up to the windowsill and sprang out into the darkness, crying aloud the words that would give her wings. Her fall suddenly became a swoop, as the long bones of her arms lengthened and hollowed themselves, as the tiny hairs on her skin blossomed into feathers, as the dimness suddenly resolved itself into the jewel-clarity of hawksight. She flew on the breath of the night, and she sang in her hawkvoice, and the dark tops of the trees in the Forbidden Forest ceased to sway so that the trees themselves could hear the joy in her voice. The song she sang was a human one, translated beyond words into the sounds her syrinx could produce, but the words in her skull were as evident in the song as they would have been had she been able to sing them aloud.

_A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts._

_ My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi. _

_ Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast dove's eyes..._

_ I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow, with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste._

_ My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. Oh, my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines; for our vines have tender grapes. My beloved is mine, and I am his; he feedeth among the lilies..._

_ Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for love is strong as death... Many waters cannot quench love, nor floods cannot it drown..._

_ I am a wall, and my breasts like towers; then was I in his eyes as one that found favour..._

_ Behold, we have reached the open sea, with some charts; and the firmament._

She soared.

That night, the dungeon was a warm place. The bed that for so long had been a cold and unwelcoming haven was, for once, comfortable and yielding. She slept curled up against him, her head resting on his chest; and he, too, slept peacefully and deeply, and without dreaming.

The Great Hall rang with conversation, as usual. Breakfast was never a quiet meal, despite the earliness of the hour, especially not today: orange and black streamers hung from every torchbracket, and the enchanted ceiling showed not the pale morning sky but a fantastic scene of witches and wizards engaging in fascinating encounters with monsters, ghouls and for some reason giant pumpkins. Harry and Ron were watching one particularly attractive witch in form-fitting black robes fighting off the advances of a rather persistent vampire.

"How'd you suppose those robes stay on?" Ron inquired dreamily. "I mean, there's hardly anything of them."

"Don't know," said Harry, just as distractedly. "Must be a Decolletage Charm." Above them, the witch in question kneed the vampire in a particularly sensitive area and proceeded to turn him into dust with a well-aimed spell. "Oooh, that's got to hurt," he muttered.

Hermione elbowed him. "Are you going to eat anything, or are you just going to stare at her?"

"Um," he said. He realized he had been holding the same forkful of bacon for almost four minutes, and that he was in fact hungry. She gave him an exasperated if affectionate look, and turned her own attention to the French toast. He shook himself. "So, Hermione, what are you going to dress up as for the ball?"

She licked her fingers clean of powdered sugar. "You'll see," she said. "It's a surprise."

"Oh, go on, tell us," said Ron, losing interest in the ceiling as the image of the witch wrapped herself in a cloak. "You're being a troll, right?"

Hermione threw a crust at him, without rancor. "No, Ron, I wouldn't dream of dressing up as you, I respect you too much." Harry snorted.

"So you're going to be a Boggart?"

"Wait and see," she said mysteriously. "What are _you_ two being, then?"

Harry and Ron exchanged glances. They hadn't actually come up with anything yet, but there was no way they were admitting that to Hermione, who had probably been planning her costume since the previous Halloween. "It's a secret," said Harry promptly.

Hermione raised an eyebrow at him. "Harry, you're utterly transparent. You haven't thought of anything yet, have you?"

Harry ate bacon, loudly. Ron sniggered. "Of course we have, we're just not telling you. Hey, you want to bet Malfoy's going to be Gilderoy Lockhart?"

Hermione laughed out loud at the thought of Draco Malfoy with a perm and lavender robes, telling everyone about his latest book. "No," she said. "I fully expect him to dress up as Snape. He _is_ Draco's idol, after all."

"Eugh," said Ron elegantly. "Well, he's ugly enough to be Snape."

Harry felt a sudden twist, remembering the look on Professor Serenskaya's face as she told him Snape was ill, the strange weakness in that silky voice half-heard through the haze of fever. They had yet to see if Snape would show up to his morning Potions class.

He threw a glance at Malfoy, who _still_ didn't look well, despite having been released by Madame Pomfrey. He looked...haunted, Harry thought stupidly. Malfoy wasn't the sort to let things haunt him. He wasn't susceptible. He was too nasty. But Harry couldn't deny that the look of smarmy malice normally sitting on Malfoy's face like a stain wasn't there; instead, the pale boy looked worried and more than a little exhausted. _Maybe he's just finally realized what an absolute scumbag he is._

Harry doubted that. He sighed and turned his attention back to Ron and Hermione, who were happily arguing about whether or not Crabbe and Goyle would even bother to dress up at all, since they were uglier than most trolls as it was. He ate a sausage, meditatively.

"What do you think, Harry?"

"I fully expect to see Crabbe and Goyle dressed up as veela," he said seriously. Hermione choked on her pumpkin juice, and Ron laughed so hard he nearly fell off his chair.

Nadezhda was sitting outside on the steps, having a cigarette before she had to teach Snape's Potions class. The morning was grey and chilly, and a slight wind stirred the drifts of brown leaves that had gathered against the edges of the steps, but Nadezhda thought it was the most beautiful morning she had ever seen. She could still smell the faint spicy scent of _him_, still feel his arms around her.

Someone flicked a cigarette lighter behind her, and she jumped, turning to see Draco Malfoy shivering in the autumn breeze. He didn't look good, she thought. He'd lost weight, and the circles under his eyes hadn't lessened much. "Hello, Draco," she said, warmly. For some reason the horror of his father wasn't bothering her as much as she'd feared it would. When Severus had told her about walking in on Lucius Malfoy and his whore, she had thought _Damn, now I'm not going to be able to look at Malfoy the younger without wanting to be sick_, but it seemed not to matter so much when faced with the hollowness in Draco's eyes.

"Professor," he said, tiredly, in greeting. "May I?"

She gestured to the step beside her."Of course. How are you?"

"Oh, fine," he said quickly, dragging on the cigarette. "What about you?"

"I'm all right," she smiled. "Malfoy, may I ask you a question?"

He looked up at her, and now she thought she saw a hunted look in the winter-colored eyes. The mask was firmly in place, but she thought she saw that look, anyway. "Yes," he said, tonelessly. "Of course."

"Is there something bothering you? You don't look well, if you don't mind my saying so."

For a moment the mask was gone completely, and she could see what looked like a very scared and very disillusioned teenager; then it came back. His voice, when he spoke, shook badly. "No," he said, "I'm fine. Nothing's wrong."

She had never heard such an obvious lie in her life, but the clock in the village struck nine, and she sighed. "We've got Potions. Please, Malfoy, if there is something wrong, do tell me. I might be able to help."

He shook his head, pitched away the cigarette end. "Thanks, Professor, but there's no need." He preceded her into the building, led the way down the stairs to Snape's dungeon classroom. Most of the students were already there, waiting to see who'd take the lesson, and she realized with a rush of mixed emotion that most of them were rather glad it was her behind the desk. _I can't make them like Severus_, she told herself firmly. _It's not my responsibility._

Malfoy wouldn't meet her eyes, all through the lesson. She had returned to Snape's syllabus, and today's subject was the uses of ground diamonds in Renaissance poisons (_what a very interesting piece of history THAT is_, she thought dryly); she wasn't familiar enough with the subject to let her attention wander far from the text, so she didn't have much of an opportunity to observe the students. Weasley and Longbottom were grinning like idiots at the pleasure of having _her_ teach rather than Snape, but apart from them and Malfoy's obvious preoccupation, most of the students seemed normal. After the lesson Malfoy was one of the first to pack up and leave, while she was still busy handing out the others' corrected homework.

She sighed. Nothing she could do. When they were gone, she left the Potions classroom and hurried down the hall to Snape's quarters, knocked on the door.

"Who is it?"

"Nadezhda." She was hardly aware she'd used that name.

He unlocked the door, let her in. He was wearing his black silk dressing gown, the same one he'd had on when she came to see him before, and she realized anew how very becoming it was on his slender frame. He locked the door behind her, turned, and took her in his arms in a rather uncertain embrace.

Her hands crept around his neck, tangled in the silky fall of his hair; her mouth sought his own. "I love you," she whispered between kisses.

He drew in a long hissing breath. "God," he said, weakly. "I'd just about convinced myself this wasn't real. That you were never here, and last night didn't happen."

She took his face between her hands, forcing him to look at her. "It's real," she said levelly. "All of it. My love, last night you made me happier than I had thought possible. Just accept what's happened between us."

"I..." he began, and coughed. "I'm trying. It's just so difficult to forget everything I've ever believed to be true, and start believing something quite different. How could anyone love me?"

She scowled at him. "Don't be thick, Severus. You're entitled to some angst every now and then, all of us are, but you needn't overdo it. Listen to me. I love you. I love you. I love you, Severus."

He drew a long shuddering breath, closing his eyes. "I love you too, Nadezhda."

She kissed his closed eyes. "See? You'll begin to believe it soon. Come sit down." She drew him towards the enormous overstuffed armchair facing the fire, pulled him down beside her. He looked a great deal better today, she reflected. He'd showered with her in the morning, and his hair wasn't lank and greasy as it tumbled in black waterfalls over his shoulders; the night's restful sleep had lessened the circles under his eyes a bit, and some of the hard-worn lines in his face had eased.

"I do believe it," he said to her. "Although I've trained myself my whole life not to accept anything that might make me weaker, I can't help believing this. It's not easy. I've dreamed of you so long, Nadezhda, that I'm used to having you disappear in an instant as I wake up. This morning..." He trailed off, buried his face in her hair. "I thought it was a particularly cruel dream, since you were there when I woke, and you stayed there, and you said my name in your sleep. I don't think I really believed you were real until you started to drool."

She laughed softly. "Sorry about that."

He smiled. She was not surprised how beautiful it made him, but she knew almost nobody else had ever seen that smile or that beauty. It was a shame. "It convinced me," he said, "since my dream-Nadezhda would never have been human enough to drool in her sleep. Do you know, I often thought I'd made you up, in the mad years? I remembered you as one of the only things I regretted leaving behind in the Light, and I had come to believe that you couldn't have been real, that I couldn't ever have felt anything for anyone as I did for you."

She sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder. "I never knew how much I loved you until I left Hogwarts," she said absently. "It wouldn't have worked, not then, even if you'd been free. I wasn't grown up enough. I would have ruined it."

"It's enough that I have you now," he told her firmly, and traced the line of her cheekbone with one long finger. "I'm so...I don't know how on earth I'm going to be able to face the students, Nadezhda."

"Why? They don't know about us." But she thought she understood, and she left off nibbling on his ear so that he could concentrate on what he wanted to say.

"I'm not sure I can be nasty to anyone right now."

She laughed, a true laugh that shook her more kindly than had her tears, and regarded him as calmly as she could. He looked odd, and she realized he was trying his best not to smile, and he failed; and it struck her again how truly handsome he was, and he clutched her to him and kissed her so hard she couldn't breathe.

"You can practice on Lupin," she said when he let her go, unable to stop smiling herself, "at lunch. How are you feeling, anyway?"

"Dreadful. Far too ill to go to lunch," he told her solemnly, regarding her through his lashes. "I think you're going to have to do a bit more nursing me back to health."

"Oh, damn," she said mildly. "What a pity." He coughed ostentatiously, making her laugh. "Yes, I think you're right. What are you doing up, anyway? You should be in bed."

"Bed is boring," said Severus Snape, and kissed her again, "without company."

She arrived a few minutes late for her DaDA noon class, tucking her hair back into its bun as she hurried into the room. Malfoy wasn't there. He was the only student missing. She marked down his absence on the roster and threw herself into the lecture, wanting only to finish as soon as she could and hurry back down to Severus, but she had just about enough professionalism left to pay attention to what she was doing, and to do it well. Pansy Parkinson kept glancing at Malfoy's empty desk, as if she'd like to leave the room and go find him, but she too was uncharacteristically well-behaved. It was bizarre. Something seemed to be happening to Hogwarts, not just to her.

Pansy looked as if she'd like to say something to her as the students filed out at the end of the lesson, but thought better of it and hurried away. Nadezhda looked at the clock in the corner. She had two hours before the next lesson. She weighed the growling of her stomach and the sweet tugging at her breastbone, and settled for food first and Severus directly afterward. She realized that she hadn't felt like this since she'd been an annoyingly giddy schoolgirl mooning over her first crush.

Nevertheless, she couldn't stop the grin from spreading once again as she snuck down to the kitchens in search of clandestine nourishment.

Harry and Hermione were sitting outside, by the lake, tossing pebbles aimlessly at the giant squid and nibbling on Honeydukes sweets. Every now and then a tentacle would emerge from the water and bat a pebble back at them. They were wasting time until Transfiguration.

"Why d'you suppose Professor Serenskaya looked so happy?" Hermione asked idly, flipping an asparagus-flavored Bertie Bott's Bean into the water. Harry leaned backwards, regarded the sky with equanimity.

"Dunno," he said. "She looked pretty happy in Potions, too, this morning. It's a good thing Snape's still out; I totally forgot to do any of the reading for Potions, and if it'd been him, I just know he would have quizzed us on it."

"You give him too much credit for being psychic," Hermione told him. "Ow!" The giant squid didn't seem to like asparagus any more than she did, and had tossed the bean back at her with astonishing accuracy. "Maybe she's just had some good news, or something."

"Maybe," Harry mused. "Herm, have you noticed there's been a string of weird things happening recently? First Snape cancels classes, then Malfoy starts acting weird, then we get this bizarre flu epidemic which apparently blew itself out like a candle, and now Snape's _still_ malingering and Malfoy's _still_ acting weird, and Professor Serenskaya's gone all dreamy and pink." He had discovered a watermelon-flavored bean, and was sucking it slowly. Hermione raised herself on an elbow and looked at him seriously.

"You think there's something bigger going on?" she asked.

"I don't know. It just seems kind of strange."

"Your scar hasn't hurt or anything, has it?"

"No, no, not at all. I don't think this is Vol...You-Know-Who. I'd like to know what it _is_, though."

Hermione sniffed suddenly. "What's that smell? It's like incense."

Harry was still tasting watermelon, and couldn't smell a thing. "Dunno."

"God, that's familiar," she said, getting up. He was suddenly aware of how different she looked, how much taller she was, and how her narrow body had blossomed and ripened in the past two years. She had a woman's body now.

_Well, she is sixteen,_ he reminded himself. _And you're hardly the skinny little kid you once were, either._ Quidditch had defined his muscles, given him a kind of lithe, wiry strength he'd never had before. He was lost in consideration of how things had changed, not thinking much of anything as he got up to follow her. She wandered along the path at the edge of the lake, sniffing occasionally. He found himself rather fascinated by the way her hips moved under the dark fall of her robes, the rhythm of her walk.

_Jeez. Like she said to Ron that one time, she _is_ a girl, and other people have noticed it. It's not her fault if you've been too thick to realize it for yourself. Deal._

He caught up with her, shaking his head to rid it of the disturbing thoughts. "What smell are you talking about?"

Hermione turned to face him. "It's a clove cigarette," she said, realizing it even as she spoke the words. "Muggles smoke them sometimes when they're feeling particularly dark or angst-ridden or self-destructive."

"Why are you following it?"

Hermione gave him a little laugh. "I don't know," she said. "But I don't know why anyone at Hogwarts would be smoking cloves, either. Unless Snape's got a secret penchant for the things."

Harry grimaced. "I don't think that's his style. I'd pick him as an opium-eater, if anything."

The silence was companionable between them, and both knew Hermione was using the mysterious scent as an excuse to walk with him, and neither of them minded. They veered off towards the Forbidden Forest, home of acromantulae, centaurs, Jarveys and the occasional werewolf. Harry loved the Forest, despite his myriad painful memories of it; especially now, at this time of year, when the leaves were beginning to explode in a riot of unseemly color and the air tasted sharp and slightly bitter in his mouth. It was sort of like being inside a Filibuster's Firework might be, he reflected. Only not so dangerous. The scarlet, vermilion and gold of the falling leaves seemed to scintillate around Harry and Hermione like the sparks that exploded from the Fireworks in colorful showers.

They wandered easily through the woods, talking of this and that, unimportant things. Harry pestered her to tell him about her costume for the ball that evening, but she was resolute; "Not unless you tell me what you're going as." Since Harry's best effort thus far had been "an overworked sixth-year Gryffindor," he was just going to have to wait and see for himself.

They had just turned back and begun to wander up towards the castle on their way to Transfiguration when Hermione paused, her hand on his arm, and tipped her head on one side to listen. After a moment, Harry heard it too: the painful sounds of someone crying, desperately and helplessly, with the total abandon of one who has lost hope. Hermione motioned him to stay where he was, and crept forward very carefully over the crunching leaf-litter, peering over a stand of bushes. He watched her stiffen in shock, and she waved at him, mouthing _Come here. Quietly._

What he saw over her shoulder made him go cold all over in utter surprise. Draco Malfoy lay curled on his side in a drift of bright leaves, his face pillowed on his folded arms, just beyond the screen of bushes. He was weeping in great gasping, tearing sobs that shook his entire body, and there was a hoarseness to the sound, as if he'd been crying long enough to begin to lose his voice. There was a small heap of cigarette butts beside him, and the sweet, heady scent of clove smoke was heavy in the air.

Harry and Hermione exchanged horrified glances. Part of Harry wanted to find out what Malfoy's problem was, and part of him just wanted to run away and pretend he'd never seen that. It was sort of equivalent to seeing Snape in Neville's grandmother's hat; not an easy image to internalize. Hermione was frowning, and he knew she was debating what to do; eventually, she shook her head, and led the way quickly and silently back out of the woods and up across the lawn to the castle. Once they were out of earshot, she muttered "I didn't want to intrude. I hate Malfoy, Harry, you know that; but I couldn't bear to let him know he'd been seen."

He nodded. "That just never happened. We didn't see that."

"See what?" she inquired, and looked up into his eyes, and he grinned as the simple happiness of her company came flooding back.

"Exactly."


End file.
